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What: “I Am the Greatest!” album

Artist: Cassius Clay.

This CD is the greatest!

Well, no.

But it is a kick.

In stores today, it’s a re-release of a 1963 album, the only formal recording by the American icon and a collection of prophetic pugilistic poetry that announces the arrival of the Louisville Lip some six months before his sixth-round knockout of Sonny Liston in February 1964 made him the heavyweight champion for the first time.

“For I am the man this poem is about,” raps the original hip-hop artist. “The next champ of the world, there isn’t a doubt. This I predict, and I know the score. I’ll be champ of the world in ’64.”

Working with composer-arranger Peter Matz, best known for his work with Barbra Streisand and Tony Bennett, and Emmy Award-winning writer Gary Belkin, Clay offers these other priceless bits of bravado: “Here I predict Mr. Liston’s dismemberment, I’ll hit him so hard he’ll wonder where October and November went,” and, “Yes, the crowd did not dream, when they put down their money, that they would see a total eclipse of the Sonny.”

When a woman in the studio audience asks the 21-year-old boxer if he’s ever been in love, he says, “Not with anyone else.”

In the liner notes, sports columnist Milton Gross of the New York Post writes of Clay: “He has one finger on the promotional pulse of the boxing world, one finger on the lips of the Muse and one reaching for the pie in the sky that comes with the world’s heavyweight title. This leaves him two fingers free. With one he taps himself on the chest as he proclaims, ‘I Am the Greatest.’ With the other he pats himself on the back in total agreement.”

Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Marianne Moore refers to Clay as “a knight, a king of the ring, a mimic, a satirist . . . he is, of course, master of the hyperbole.”

Recorded in August 1963 and released two months later, “I Am the Greatest!” spent 20 weeks on the Billboard Top LPs chart and peaked at No. 61.

The digitally remastered version out today includes three bonus tracks, including two songs on which Clay sings the lead vocal, among them Ben E. King’s 1961 hit, “Stand By Me.”