Answering his calling pays off

HIS victims are rap stars, music-industry titans and at least one hotel-chain heiress. And his weapon is the phone. This is the world of Ralphige, a high-concept prank phone call maker from Miami who has become hip-hop’s answer to the Jerky Boys.

Given his knack for targeting boldfaced names, Ralphige won’t divulge his true identity or day job except to deny working in the music industry or media. But over the last two years, the jokester has verbally punked a who’s who of pop luminaries -- Chamillionaire, Interscope

Records chief Jimmy Iovine,

Flavor Flav, Rev Run and Pharrell Williams among them -- then aired the recorded conversations on various radio programs, hip-hop websites and underground mix-tapes, building a cultish following that seems to take unmitigated pleasure in Ralphige’s Information Age spin on celebrity schaudenfreude.

Among his career highlights: An angry Busta Rhymes threatened Ralphige with bodily harm after he called claiming to be the spirit of the rapper’s murdered bodyguard. Posing as Universal Records Chief Executive Doug Morris, Ralphige phoned Island Def Jam president Jay-Z, offering him a job. Last March, hit-making producer Scott Storch was “Ralphigized” by the prankster impersonating a jealous boyfriend of Storch’s protege, Brooke Hogan -- which led to a second heated conversation with her father, wrestler Hulk Hogan.

And in a notorious call recorded in early April, Ralphige conned Michael Jackson into thinking he was talking to hip-hop crooner Akon calling to discuss a possible collaboration on the King of Pop’s comeback album. (A representative for Jackson declined to comment.)

Every call begins with insider information, such as a star’s home phone number or unlisted cellphone digits.

“It’s their entourage, people in their crews. They’ll send me an e-mail,” said Ralphige, 24. “With Scott Storch, somebody he hangs around with sent me one: ‘It would be funny if you called Scott.’ From there it snowballed. Other people from other crews started calling me, giving me the main guy’s number.”

Although it is difficult to independently verify the calls -- most of the people he cranks are unwilling to recount the experience, and almost all immediately change their numbers -- Ralphige’s supporters insist his calls are the real thing. And a growing number of mainstream outlets, including Sirius Satellite Radio’s channel Shade 45, XXL magazine, WorldStarHiphop.com, Allhiphop.com and Boston radio station JAM’N 94.5 FM have been broadcasting his efforts.

Carl Cherry, who has written about Ralphige as senior correspondent for the hip-hop website SOHH.com, expressed some doubt about the authenticity of the Jackson phone call in which Ralphige-as-Akon brags about owning a “blood diamond” mine in Somalia and warns him to stay away from kids. But Cherry accepts the veracity of the other calls.

“I think those are real,” he said. “You can recognize their voices and tell by the sound that it’s not a set-up.”

A Ralphige CD, “Phone’kd,” becomes available May 22 on his website, www.ralphige.com (the curious can also hear snippets at www.myspace.com/ralphige) containing calls he placed to Paris Hilton, DMX and Young Jeezy, among others.

“I got this idea by watching the way that everybody sells mix-tapes,” Ralphige said. “They cost about 60 cents to make, and you can sell a million. I figured, I can’t rap. I can’t sing. I can’t make a beat. So I thought, maybe I can do crank calls, record a phone call and try to sell it to people.”

And despite the dubious legality of such a release -- Ralphige doesn’t always land the consent to distribute recordings of those he has cranked -- he insists that his heart is in the right place.

“I’m actually a big fan of the people that I call,” Ralphige said. “But I think it’s funny. And I know that people like hearing them when they’re not prepared.”

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Stax Records marks its 50th

EVEN though its talent tally hasn’t yet been finalized, the 50th anniversary celebration for one of soul music’s most vaunted labels, Stax Records, is shaping up to be a perfect storm-like merging of past and present soul and R&B; immortals. They will take the stage at Memphis’ Orpheum Theater on June 22 for what promises to be an evening of hot buttered soul.

Among the confirmed performers at “50 Years of Stax: A Concert to Benefit the Stax Museum of American Soul Music”: Mavis Staples, Isaac Hayes, Angie Stone, Eddie Floyd, Booker T & the MGs (featuring Steve Cropper and Donald “Duck” Dunn), the Soul Children, William Bell and members of the Redding family who will honor their late patriarch Otis Redding.

As per the event’s name, proceeds will go to the museum (also located in Memphis) dedicated to the preservation and legacy of -- what else? -- American soul music.

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Raising a glass to Jimi Hendrix

AS a slogan for an energy drink, “taste life” is fairly innocuous. But it seems in particularly poor taste as applied to Voodoo Vibe, which went on sale Friday, billed as the “first flavor in the Jimi Hendrix-branded line” of beverages.

Everyone knows the guitar god drank in life -- as well as vast quantities of LSD -- to the fullest, a trait that was also responsible for his death at age 27 in 1970: After drinking wine, taking sleeping pills and falling into a deep slumber, Hendrix choked to death in his sleep.

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chris.lee@latimes.com