No wonder he’s down in the mouth

Beanie Sigel should be planning a splashy release party to celebrate his third album, “The B-Coming,” which hits stores in December. Instead, the rapper is recovering from dental surgery -- and that’s the good news. He got teeth pulled now so he wouldn’t have to let a prison dentist yank them in the months to come. That’s because this week Sigel is scheduled to turn himself in for a yearlong prison sentence.

The Roc-a-Fella Records star is going in after a guilty plea on federal drug and weapon charges, a situation the tough-talking rapper explains in fairly explicit terms in his new mix-tape track “Public Enemy No. 1.” How will the sentence affect his career? It’s hard to predict. Rapper Shyne was effectively derailed from a promising fame-track when he took a felony fall, and music mogul Suge Knight walked out of a California prison yard to find that the rap industry had moved on without him. But established stars have also gained street cred with cell time (Tupac Shakur) or courtroom ordeals (Snoop Dogg), and Sigel’s mentor, Jay-Z, learned long ago that his street-life exploits only enhance the grit of his CD exploits.

Sigel’s rhymes are far less fancy than Jay-Z’s flows about Cristal and Bentleys, but he has mixed feelings about the free publicity of a police mug shot. “I want to be successful because I’m good at what I do,” he said in a magazine interview. “People think I’m a drug dealer and a murderer. That’s not me.”

The stocky, usually glowering Sigel was born 30 years ago in south Philadelphia and made his mark in 1999 with the hit album “The Truth.” Despite a less confident follow-up with “The Reason” in 2001, he was established. A film role in “State Property” and a reprisal of it in the coming “State Property II” added to his aura. His lyrics are in-your-face, with descriptions of torturing rivals and raping a pregnant woman.

That persona seemed to be pretty real after a flurry of arrests and charges over the last year and a half. The one-year-and-a-day sentence for drug and gun possession was much less than prosecutors sought. The reason: The federal judge presiding in the case said Sigel’s plea, his descriptions of remorse and his recent community work showed a “significant endeavor to change his life.”

But the past is as hard to ignore as a bad tooth. In January, a month after “The B-Coming” lands in stores, Sigel is scheduled to be on trial a second time on an attempted murder charge.

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-- Geoff Boucher