That Rascally Rapper

The British insist that Dizzee Rascal has all the right rap values. He hates violence, cops and teen pregnancy; he likes parties, sneakers and sex. Americans will just have to take it on faith, because entire songs fly by on Dizzee's debut album, Boy in Da Corner, in which nothing recognizable as a word rises above the computer-generated whirs and beats. Occasionally you can hear Dizzee scream his name, and attentive listeners might even catch him boasting about being unstoppable. But a lot of Boy in Da Corner sounds like Michael Caine speed-reading P. Diddy's biography in a video arcade.

The problem isn't just that Dizzee's East London accent is thick, though it is. It's that Dizzee (ne Dylan Mills), 19, speaks in a tangled local idiom in which choppah means knife, chaps are chains and sket means slut. In Britain, where most rappers still spit moldy American hip-hop cliches, Dizzee is celebrated as a rap original. (Boy in Da Corner beat out albums by Radiohead and Coldplay for the country's prestigious Mercury Prize.) But American audiences — who get Dizzee's album on Jan. 20, six months after the Brits — have a right to ask: What, exactly, is rap without words they can understand?

On first listen, not much. But a few tracks on Boy in Da Corner transcend their initial incomprehensibility. Dizzee is a big fan of jungle — an electronic dance style that mixes chaotic rhythms with everyday sounds — and his production skills are first-rate. With frenetic beats below and threatening ambient noises, like sirens and whizzing bullets, hovering on top, I Luv U and Sittin' Here effectively re-create midnight in London's housing projects. When Dizzee lets loose with some of his staccato chirps, the musical tension only increases. His tongue is definitely twisted, but at least his ears are in great shape.