A SOUND REBOUND

When a little-known gospel group named God's Property made its debut last summer, more than a few record executives must have gagged on the irony and wished the album a quick trip to industry hell, the discount bin. The group's distributor, Interscope Records, had previously banked some of rap's most notorious performers. But the rap-flavored rhythms and praise-the-Lord lyrics of God's Property rose in the charts. Divine intervention?

Iovine intervention is more like it, as in Jimmy Iovine, head of Interscope Records. Prodded by its new owner, Seagram, Iovine and partner Ted Field are remaking Interscope from a high-risk purveyor of gangsta rap into an imposing presence in rock, R. and B. and gospel, gobbling down an ever bigger slice of the $12.5 billion U.S. record market. God's Property--which went on to sell a heavenly 1 million copies three months after hitting record stores--helped slingshot Seagram's Universal Music Group last summer from fifth place to third place among the six top record companies, with 13.8% of the market.

Two years ago, Interscope was a small record company that became a huge political problem for its then owner, Time Warner (parent company of TIME's publisher), by releasing gangsta-rap albums such as Tupac Shakur's 2pacalypse Now. Capitulating to critics, Time Warner severed its joint agreement with Interscope and sold its 50% stake back to Iovine and Field for $100 million. Four months later, the two resold that stake to hit-starved Universal for $200 million. This is not an industry big on morality plays.

Since then, Interscope's sales have nearly tripled, to about $340 million this year. A hefty portion of those sales was spun off by its hugely profitable rap subsidiary, Death Row Records, whose owner, Suge Knight, is in prison and whose biggest star, Tupac, is dead, victim of a gangster-style rubout as he rode in Suge's BMW. Facing this kind of continuity problem, Iovine and Fields started focusing the company's resources on nonrap acts, and the shift is paying off.

Not since Geffen Records in the early 1980s has a record label so dominated the industry. This year five of Interscope's albums have hit the Top 10, including the bland pop-rock act the Wallflowers, smooth R.-and-B. quartet Blackstreet, and shock rocker Marilyn Manson. "They keep things lean and focused," says Geoff Mayfield, charts editor of Billboard magazine. "They don't have a ton of acts, but they have a very high batting average with the ones they've got."

Spectacular successes like these have been based largely on a Faustian handshake: the company's willingness to gamble on edgy, explicit music made by edgy, unpredictable performers. The artists include Snoop Doggy Dogg, whose resume includes a drug conviction, and Manson, whose malevolent twist includes such ditties as Tourniquet and Irresponsible Hate Anthem. Their discs have attracted millions of young buyers fascinated by the music's aggression and X-rated imagery.

The golden gut at Interscope belongs to Iovine. The son of a longshoreman, he grew up on Brooklyn's tough streets and still has the switchblade tongue to prove it. A lean, wary man and one of the few record executives who looks natural in jeans and a baseball cap, Iovine pulled himself up to become a trusted producer for Bruce Springsteen and U2.