Rap

The Goats took the stage at the Trocadero on Thursday night in a rush. Speaking the praises of "Philly Blunts," rappers Madd and Swayzack (the third MC, OaTie, who rapped on the Goats' debut, Tricks of the Shade, is gone) bounded out to the screaming crunch of bass, drums and guitar. They were in a hurry to serve up material from their long-time-coming sophomore effort, No Goats, No Glory (Ruffhouse/Columbia), due Sept. 20. Madd wore a bearded, goatish grin; Swayzack seemed calm, until he leapt head-first into the crowd.

It was Labor Day barbecue time at Lincoln University, the historic black college in rural Oxford, Chester County, and the smell of burning chicken, fish, steaks and burgers wafted through the cool twilight air. If, for some reason, you couldn't find the tennis courts behind Frederick Douglass Hall by following your nose, the sounds coming from a stereo - its speakers blasting - may have attracted your attention. Pulsating from a system belonging to senior Dereck Sadler, 21, were raps from the popular and controversial N.W.A.

Hip-hop has long been pegged as a rhythmic vehicle for arm-swinging bravado and political rage. All the machismo and anger sometimes obscures the fact that rap can actually be an end in itself. The Pharcyde makes it clear that its hip-hop is not a mere instrument for dancing or rhetoric. The group paints its rap with abstract strokes and takes listeners for the kind of roller-coaster ride not heard since De La Soul's 3 Feet High and Rising (1989). Its debut album, Bizarre Ride II The Pharcyde (Delicious Vinyl )

Jay-Z's third release, "Vol. 2 . . . Hard Knock Life," has spawned a couple of hit singles: the annoying but engaging "Hard Knock Life," which features a sample from the chorus of "It's a Hard Knock Life" from the Broadway musical "Annie," and that cute - at least the version edited for radio play - call-and-response "Can I Get a . . . " with Amil & Ja Rule. (Warning: The album version is raunchier.) Those cuts represent the highlights, for taken as a complete project, "Vol. 2 . . . Hard Knock Life" misses a few chapters.

If Allen Iverson's corrosive thug-life raps are a symptom of the disease, then the Word of Mouth Tour - featuring Jurassic-5, Dilated Peoples, MC Supernatural and the Beat Junkies - is hope for a cure. The tour, which played to a near-capacity, overwhelmingly white crowd Saturday night at the Electric Factory, harks back to the old-school days of hip-hop before it was all about murder and jewelry. First up was the Beat Junkies, a West Coast collective of highly skilled turntablists who raise the art of scratching to the level of alchemy, spinning vinyl into gold with all manner of freestyle DJ deck manipulations.

Part boisterous beat poet, part suburban storyteller, MC 900 Ft. Jesus trades in narratives of paralyzing psychoses and numbing nightmares. Less a rapper than a radical raconteur, the Dallas-based MC is the interior voice of what's become known as Apocalypse Culture. His monologues, a parade of images seen through a hall of broken mirrors, are documents of fractured psyches and schizophrenics living in a world without hope. MC 900 Ft. Jesus also may be one of the best sound sculptors to come down the pike since Public Enemy's Bomb Squad.

Authorities yesterday charged a Northeast Philadelphia woman with illegally importing and possession with intent to distribute more than four million diet pills that had not been approved for sale by the Food and Drug Administration. Mimi Trieu, 45, of Brighton Street near Summerdale Avenue, allegedly sold 1.75 million pills, netting herself more than $245,000. Trieu pleaded not guilty in federal magistrate court yesterday to mail fraud, conspiracy to smuggle goods and possession with intent to distribute controlled substances.

On a recent Sunday afternoon, Ruth Ann Mandell, defense lawyer, put on another performance, but it was nowhere near a courtroom. Blond hair swirling madly around her head, looking like Sarah Jessica Parker on speed, she belted out a rap while her face shifted from anger to glee and she slid across the floor. At the peak of her career as a public defender, Mandell wants at 47 to rap the beat after beating so many raps. And, in the face of steep odds, she believes she is a contender - that she has the stuff that will one day put her over the top and into rap stardom.

Philadelphia rapper Schoolly-D, scheduled to perform at Revival on Wednesday night, was sick at home, but his four-man rap backup team, P.S.K. Crew, performed, and they were illin'. The P.S.K. Crew's performance was energetic and enjoyable, but ultimately lacked the leader's content and style. The four took the stage undaunted and, as they announced, "ready to rock the house. " Leader M.C. Pimp began by rapping with another Crew member, their alternating-verse style reminiscent of that of Run-DMC: They strutted back and forth on the stage while rapping verses in call and response.

Rap royalty Willard Smith, the second half of the Grammy-award winning duo D.J. Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince, was jailed yesterday, accused of ordering his bodyguard to attack a record promoter, who suffered a broken eye socket, police said. The 20-year-old star, accompanied by his lawyer, Walter Phillips Jr., surrendered to detectives at 4 p.m. yesterday and was charged with aggravated and simple assault and conspiracy, police said. Smith, 20, who lives with his parents in Lower Merion Township, Montgomery County, is the Fresh Prince in the world of rap, where he and partner Jazzy Jeff have risen to the top of the genre.