Beware

06/24/2003 8:00 PM, LAUNCH
Dan Leroy

When East meets West on the pop music playing field, the latter has a habit of coming out on top, particularly when the inexorable beats of hip-hop are involved. Yet while the debut from Coventry, England's Rajinder Rai, aka Pan'jabi MC, has that same westward lean, thanks in large part to its Jay-Z cameo on the hit "Beware Of The Boys," it's actually the closest thing to a draw the collision of cultures has yet produced. For all the American window dressing (and Jigga's presence, despite the electricity it adds, is just that; his verses, which include a standard anti-war whine, are nothing special), the droning groove of bhangra is the real driving force here. That makes less overt mash-ups like "Jogi" and "Yaaran Kollon Sikh Kuriye" even more thrilling than Beware's big single--on those songs and others, it's the familiar funk licks that are stretched across an alien framework of wails and chants, instead of the other way around. If anyone needed proof that hip-hop's recent fascination with all things Indian is destined to be much more than a flavor-of-the-year phase, here it is.