Too Short in the Heart of Rap Beast : TOO SHORT, “Cocktails”; <i> Jive</i> (***)

P-Funk samples are very nice, Uzi-death imagery a useful condiment, but the soul of the hard-core rap thing has always lain in the blaxploitation pimp-rhyme made famous by such West Coast comedians as Rudy Ray Moore--the breathtakingly blue suppositions about your mother, your girlfriend and the woman in the front row. If you’re concerned about the self-reflexive sexism in hip-hop, pimp rhyming is the throbbing heart of the beast.

As the acknowledged West Coast master of the pimp rhyme, Oakland rapper Too Short built a hip-hop empire on the vulgar street-corner snap, clever though rudimentary litanies of profanity and mayhem. Several of Too Short’s albums have gone double platinum; each of them sounds as if it were recorded for $600 and change.

On “Cocktails”--which, as you might expect, is not named after a beverage--Too Short finally antes up for some production values, and the usual nasty, funny rhymes are shored up with tight, booming bass, G-funk counter melodies and beyond-the-beat-box beats. Your girlfriend still won’t let you listen to this when she’s around, but “Cocktails” may be the first Too Short album made for the dance floor instead of the back seat of a Pontiac.

New albums are rated on a scale of one star (poor) to four (excellent).