<i> Albums are rated on a scale of one star (poor) to five stars (a classic). : </i>

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PROFESSOR GRIFF & THE LAST ASIATIC DISCIPLES

“Pawns in the Game” Skyywalker Records

The center of the Public Enemy anti-Semitism storm finally gets his chance to prove whether he has something to say--or whether he just talks a lot. The verdict: Griff’s mouth runneth over. Even at his most eloquent--and often on his debut album he and his posse present their black-pride messages with forceful eloquence--he does little more than parrot wisdoms and observations received from African-American leaders (Malcolm X on down) without regard for consistency or logic.

Every call for cross-cultural unity is shot through with scatter-gun separatist rhetoric, every plea for peace countered with militaristic bravado and every line encouraging blacks to take responsibility for themselves undermined by blaming everyone but blacks for the world’s problems. And “The Interview,” is not the excerpt from his notorious Washington Times interview that he said would make clear that he was misunderstood, but just a jumble of speech and sounds that clears up nothing at all.

To Griff’s credit, he and the L.A.D. have fashioned some noteworthy settings for the rantings, though little approaching the innovative power of Public Enemy. Among the best is the two-part “Real African People,” harking to the jazzy beat style of rap precursors the Last Poets and Gil Scott-Heron, whom--to his further credit--he acknowledges (among many others) in the album-closing litany “Blax Thanx.” But then, he also acknowledges Moammar Kadafi, another master of inflammatory speech and self-serving rationales.