POP TAKES A LITTLE R&R;

As a kid, Limp Bizkit lead singer Fred Durst loved the beats and swagger of hip-hop, but he also admired the sheer power of a killer rock guitar. So when he became a musician, it was only natural to mix the two genres together.

The result: a thudding, thrashing concoction called rap-rock that some observers say is breathing much-needed commercial life into an ailing rock scene and transforming the rival sounds of turntables and guitars into a dynamic partnership.

“The lines, the [old] barriers between all these music styles, they’re all fading,” Durst said this week. “It’s not this black and white thing anymore.”

Three leaders on the scene, Limp Bizkit, Korn and Kid Rock, have combined to sell an estimated $55 million worth of albums in the U.S. in the last six months. The hottest of the moment is Limp Bizkit’s “Significant Other,” which has been the nation’s top-selling album since its debut two weeks ago--the first time a rock album has topped the charts this year.

“This has clearly replaced the Pearl Jam sound for the young male listeners,” says Gary Arnold, senior vice president of merchandising for the Best Buy chain. “There’s the hard guitar, the tone. . . . It’s attitude rock and it’s tattoo rock and it’s done well over the past few years.”

That steady success was led by Korn, a Southern California band with a guitar-heavy sound that is more beholden to Metallica or Nirvana and presented with rap accents. But the movement has truly come into its own in recent months with the more overtly hip-hop music of Kid Rock and Limp Bizkit.

It may be fitting that rap influence is adding creative and sales juice to rock, because the ascension of rap since the 1980s has been mentioned as a factor in rock’s well-chronicled slide in recent years. According to the industry statistics, rock’s share of the now $14 billion U.S. music market has fallen from 42% in 1989 to 26% last year.

Rap-rock is gaining strength in the alternative rock scene and finding a young, suburban male audience that in the past has embraced heavy metal and hard-core rap.

“It’s really the new heavy metal,” says Cheryl Botchick, music editor of CMJ New Music Report. “Middle America youth wants aggressive music and this is the obvious path to go down. . . . It has the metal sound with the gangsta vibe of rap.”

Mixing the cadences of rap with the crunch and aggressive guitars of metal, rap-rock is not a new idea--Los Angeles’ Rage Against the Machine has been doing it to critical acclaim since the early 1990s--but the newer crop of acts has turned that musical marriage into a movement.

The Deftones, Insane Clown Posse, Staind and Reveille are other groups tapping into a rap-rock sound, and Botchick says she expects “an avalanche” of similar acts following the Bizkit success.

“You’re going to see heavy-metal bands putting a deejay up on the stage and forcing it, which is a shame,” Botchick said. “It’s a little opportunistic. So far, of all these groups, only Rage Against the Machine has made real artistic strides. Their sound feels more organic, more honest, which isn’t often the case.”

Indeed, Rage has been widely praised for using knotty hip-hop and a scathing barrage of metal to deliver its politically radical lyrics. That type of critical acclaim has eluded Limp Bizkit, Korn, Kid Rock and the rest of the recent wave.

Limp Bizkit, for instance, is often praised for high-energy performances and the work of DJ Lethal (the former House of Pain turntable star), but has been labeled as sophomoric for songs such as the current hit “Nookie.” Durst shrugs off the pans and says he hopes Bizkit will mirror the career trajectory of the Beastie Boys, a group that matured from early party hits to more meaningful work.

“We want to make timeless music, and we haven’t done that yet,” Durst said. “It’s going to come, though. . . . If we haven’t blown your mind yet, we will.”

Many fans are already on board. Bizkit has sold 970,000 copies of “Significant Other” in two weeks and their previous album, “Three Dollar Bill Yall$,” is closing in on 1.7 million copies sold.

Korn, meanwhile, has sold 2.4 million copies of its most recent album, “Follow the Leader,” while Kid Rock’s “Devil Without a Cause” is closing in on 1.3 million copies sold. All three groups have become staples on MTV, and their concerts and festival appearances are strong draws at a time when few young acts are consistent at arena box offices.

Still, retailers were caught off-guard by the intensity of first-week sales for “Significant Other”--635,000, the best “heavy” music debut since Metallica’s “Load” in 1996.

“We sold 52,000 copies of ‘Significant Other’ on the first day, which is close to what we projected for the entire first week,” said Best Buy’s Arnold.

Arnold and others believe the rap-rock sound (a.k.a. hip-metal or rap-metal, depending on whom you ask) is ready-made for today’s youthful music fans, who have less loyalty to narrow genres and are drawn to category-defying artists such as the Beastie Boys and Beck.

Rap and rock have flirted for years. In 1986, the Beastie Boys brought big guitars to their hip-hop anthem “(You Gotta) Fight for Your Right (to Party),” the same year Aerosmith and Run-DMC collaborated on a hit remake of the former’s “Walk This Way.”

“It’s not foreign to people anymore, but it was then,” said Run of Run-DMC, whose upcoming album features a new collaboration with Aerosmith. “We created the first rap-rock in 1983 with ‘Rock Box,’ and now its exploding again. Korn and Kid Rock, they’ve got the feeling and kids love it.”

The rap infusion into rock has taken many forms, from alternative godfathers such as R.E.M. adding a rap segment to a song to the far more subtle invasion of hip-hop-style beats into mainstream rock.

To Durst, who grew up idolizing both Dr. Dre and Kurt Cobain, rap-rock is the next obvious step for pop music.

“This is the way things were headed; we just have a real nice balance of the two so people like our music,” Durst said. “I just can’t wait to hear more of it, to hear the next new step.”

Devil May Care

* Kid Rock’s “Devil Without a Cause” is closing in on 1.3 million copies sold. The outrageous hip-hop rocker dude is profiled in Sunday Calendar--and it turns out he’s a cagey guy who might be in on the start of a movement.