Harmony? Good to the Bone

FROM the dawn of hip-hop through the mid-1990s, rapping and singing were like church and state. Rappers rapped, singers sang and, especially on gangsta rap records, never the twain did meet.

All that changed in 1994 when Cleveland quintet Bone Thugs-N-Harmony upended the hip-hop paradigm, marrying West Coast G-Funk and gun-blast boasts to a mellifluous rapping-singing hybrid that has since been co-opted by the likes of Mariah Carey, Jay-Z, T-Pain and Akon. After becoming one of the top-selling hip-hop acts, Bone Thugs finally imploded; rapper Flesh-N-Bone was sentenced in 2000 to 11 years in prison on gun charges and three years later, founding member Bizzy Bone was kicked out for erratic behavior.

Fan fealty never flagged, however. And now as a trio signed to Interscope Records/Full Surface Records, Bone Thugs is set to release “Strength and Loyalty” in late March, its first major-label release since the group’s platinum-certified greatest hits album in 2004. The rappers’ aim: to claim to their rightful place in the annals of hip-hop.

“I can’t turn on the radio without hearing a bunch of Mini-Mes,” says Bone Thugs’ Layzie Bone. “We really created a movement in music 13 years ago. We changed music and got everybody to do what we do. But you never see us mentioned as one of the greatest groups of all time. That makes us mad as hell.”

Over the last 18 months, the group hopscotched across the country, recording some 75 songs in New York, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Cleveland and Phoenix with the help of a Who’s Who of hit-making producers -- will.i.am, Timbaland, Jazze Pha and Swizz Beats among them. From there, Bone Thugs narrowed the album’s track listing to a single album’s worth of songs (an exact count has not been decided).

A world-class wrecking crew of hip-hop and R&B; chart toppers, including the Game, Chamillionaire, Three 6 Mafia and Carey, were brought in as featured artists (one such collaboration, “I Tried,” featuring Akon, will be released Feb. 1).

And courtesy of vocals he laid down before his prison sentence, Flesh-N-Bone appears on “Strength and Loyalty.” “We found some of his old sounds and put new production on it,” Layzie explains. “His incarceration is up next year, and they just moved him to a lower-security prison. He went through hell in that system. But by the time of his release in 2008, it’ll be like we never had a break.”

Hot sauce is an offspring product

IN 1998, Orange County pop-punk outfit the Offspring’s ode to Caucasian ghetto-fabulousness, “Pretty Fly (for a White Guy),” lighted up alternative-rock radio, inspiring legions of would be K-Feds to follow their bliss. Now, the group’s lead singer, Dexter Holland, is offering a different kind of cultural rapprochement: Gringo Bandito Hot Sauce.

Touted by no less than OC Weekly’s “Ask a Mexican” columnist Gustavo Arellano as “one of the best gabacho-made hot sauces invented,” Gringo Bandito contains a fiery blend of hot peppers and “mojo spices”; its bottle is festooned with the image of a blond, spiky-haired Holland in a sombrero.

Helpfully, the sauce’s website, www.gringobandito.com, provides Gringo Bandito recipes that were clearly put together with its target demographic in mind: Ghetto Pizza (white bread with American cheese and spaghetti sauce doused with the hot sauce), Ramen Magnifico (an Asian-Latino fusion composed of Top Ramen and ground beef) and Rick’s Prison “Spread” (ingredients include Cheetos, canned tuna and “other crap,” which gets “cooked” in a plastic garbage bag). Pretty fly indeed.

Autism awareness, conveyed in songs

THE project began three years ago when John O’Neil, a writer and editor for the New York Times, wrote a heartfelt op-ed page essay about his son James’ autism.

He went on to join forces with Jon Fried and Deena Shoshkes, singers-songwriters for power-pop band the Cucumbers; music producer Michael Visceglia; and filmmaker Dan Griffin to form the nonprofit group SingSOS. Its stated intention: to raise “awareness, funds and spirits” in the struggle against autism and related disorders.

SingSOS’ primary initiative has been to recruit an eclectic bunch of musicians to record songs for an album, “Songs of the Spectrum.” Nancy Sinatra, Marshall Crenshaw, the Roches, Phoebe Snow and Don Dixon have contributed songs that “attempt the impossible: to describe the experience of autism from the point of view of the parent and the child, and to go where that experience goes: into despair, hope, exhaustion, exhilaration, awe, anger, bitterness, determination and gratitude,” O’Neil explains on the SingSOS MySpace page (https:// www.myspace.com/songsofthe spectrum). “If there is a single message in the body of work, it’s that early intervention and dedicated, relentless treatment can have a genuinely transforming effect.”

Although “Songs of the Spectrum” has yet to land a distribution deal, negotiations continue with well-known artists.

Label founder is back with another

WHO says there are no second acts in American lives? Certainly not Jerry Heller, the music maverick who founded Ruthless Records in 1986 with rapper Eazy-E and helped launch the career of incendiary rap quartet N.W.A before becoming the most vilified executive in hip-hop -- the subject of bilious diss tracks by artists such as Ice Cube, Nelly and Dr. Dre.

Now, Heller is reemerging as an urban music player by partnering in Streetlife/Klock Work Records, an L.A.-based label he launched last week with Pablito Vasquez and Johnny “J,” the latter of whom produced 150 tracks for Tupac Shakur.

“This is the label where corporate meets the street,” Heller said in a press release. “Our goal is to bring back economic integrity to the music business.”

chris.lee@latimes.com