Rebirth Of The Cool

It took Cora Spearman more than three weeks before she braved the Lit X stage, but now here she is, all Saturday-night nerves and hip-hop bravado. It is still early evening in Chicago's funky Wicker Park neighborhood, and the club - the dimly lit basement of an African-American bookstore - is packed with twentysomething hip-hoppers in baggy jeans and African accessories, puffing cigars or joints beneath Bob Marley posters and paintings by black artists. Cora is 19, a sophomore at Antioch College; she wandered into the poetry nights at Lit X for the vibe: part rap jam, part group-therapy session. "Hip-hop now has so many negative images," she says, "that there was nowhere else to go but positive." Under a cloud of incense, she takes the stage, her short perm just starting to grow out. Some of the earlier poets were accompanied by hand drums, flute or the staccato sputtering of a "human beat box," but Cora brings only herself and her metaphors. "You are like my afro," she calls, "something I want but don't have yet."

This is the hip-hop culture nobody sees. Beyond the commercial tsunami of gangsta rap, hip-hop has always harbored a more reflective, alternative edge. Now, as the rap scene reels from the murders of Tupac Shakur and the Notorious B.I.G., the bohemian fringes are starting to bloom. This spring's unsung gem, the romantic comedy "love jones," showcased the Chicago poetry scene, turning hip-hop-generation lovers loose in a boho playground of John Coltrane LPs, Gordon Parks photos and sexy raindrops. On urban radio, the million-selling Erykah Badu channels the fragile heartache of Billie Holiday. Her head wrapped in African cloth, her conversation laced with talk of "spirituality" and "consciousness," she is a compendium of bohemias past, all tightened with contemporary hip-hop torque. Singers like Maxwell, Eric Benet, Me'Shell NdegeOcello and Dionne Farris reprise jazzy soul moves. What's a gangsta to do? "Rapping about one brother killing another brother is just not where I am coming from these days," says producer and rapper Dr. Dre, the musical architect behind gangsta rap. "And I think with the recent deaths no one should. The new vibe out there reflects that."

It has been called alternative soul, ebony nouveau or hip-hop renaissance, an efflorescence still in search of a name. It is a blip compared to gangsta, and sometimes dopey in its earnestness. In sweaty spots like Lit X, or its better-known equivalents - the Nuyorican Poets Cafe in New York, the Lyrical Cafe in Los Angeles - it is as hip-hop as Snoop Doggy Dogg, but without the cussing and cartoon machismo. For a generation now passing out of its teens, you could call this the rebirth of the real. "This is a movement that's said that black life doesn't end at age 25," says Branford Marsalis, who combines rap, jazz and poetry in his group, Buckshot LeFonque. Spend a Saturday night at Lit X and you'll pick up an earful: about Ricki Lake and Jimi Hendrix, about slave auctions and drive-by shootings, about the vulnerable side of male love. "To me hip-hop had become too commercial," says James Williams, just off the Lit X stage. "Rappers [started rhyming] about what they thought mainstream America wanted to hear. At Lit X we get back to what hip-hop was supposed to be. It isn't about posturing or trying to fit a mold. It's about self-love and uplifting the race."

In an early seduction scene in "love jones," Larenz Tate plays an old vinyl album for Nia Long. As the room fills with a melancholy alto sax, she says, "Charlie Parker. I've never heard this particular [version]." It is a line of dialogue out of a dream, or at least not out of contemporary black Hollywood. But it could be a signature for the new bohemia. Like the scene at Lit X or the retro grooves of Erykah Badu, the film serves up a banquet of black respect: for the past, for the culture, for each other. The good vibes can feel forced, but never faked. To fans like Latisa Collins, 21, a senior at Spelman College, who saw the movie "about seven times," the note rang both true and overdue. " "Waiting to Exhale' wasn't my reality, nor was "Booty Call'," she says. With "love jones," though, "there is finally a feeling out there that I feel."

This nostalgia is something new. The great jazz drummer (and MacArthur Fellow) Max Roach once argued that black culture didn't romanticize the past, because the past held only injustice. It was an article of racial progress to keep on pushing, the engine that kept African-American expression so fresh. But in an era of economic backsliding, the nostalgia of "'love jones" or Lit X plays less as escapism than idealism - a new drink from an old wellspring. "Blacks have always celebrated their history," contends director Ted Witcher. "We've just always had to pick and choose what to keep and discard. "love jones' embraces both the past and the present, because the present must learn from the past to continue."

On a Monday night at the House of Blues on L.A.'s Sunset Strip, Badu invites her audience across this cultural span. Where Lit X and "love jones" are relatively marginal, Badu is a force; her album, "Baduizm," hit No. 1. The stage is lit with candles, bathed in the smoke of incense - the kind of Afrocentric trappings often mistakenly tagged as hippie. Badu used to rap, and still writes rhymes; in a regal mint green African dress, she brings Brooklyn swagger and a message of renewal. The crowd, mostly in their 20s and 30s, wants to join her, but they are only halfway there, still dressed in their office attire. But they are singing, and to every song. "Thank you for being a part of the birthing process," she says. "I'm the midwife, but you're a part of the process, too."

In the audience, supermodel Tyra Banks nods in recognition, and director John Singleton. And captivated by the sound is Dr. Dre, not a gangsta air about him. He, too, is growing out his afro, thinking about his next move. "Hip-hop has to continue to evolve if it wants to survive," he says, "and part of that evolving is getting back to the positive." These are soft words, as mollifying as Badu's seductive plaint. As the drums pad gently behind her, the man who gave you "F--- tha Police" joins a roomful of other successful young African-Americans, lost in a retro swing that may be his future.