"C'mon, Let's Lick This!" shouts rapper Mos Def, bounding into a rehearsal space ion West 26th Street, his new band Black Jack Johnson in tow. Every bit the dandy in a crisp white dress shirt and brown Bermuda shorts, Mos (ne' Dante Smith) turns and smiles at the two kids snoozing on the room's black leather couch. "What y'all doin'?" he says in a Bill Cosby grumpy-old-man voice. "Been drinking teenage malt liquor?"

Just as Mos livens up a lazy afternoon at a rehearsal space, he's been shaking up the city's hip-hop scene, first as half of the political rap duo Black Star and then on his solo debut, Black on Both Sides. Now, with the rock and jazz virtuosos in Black Jack Johnson - (from left, behind Mos) former Living Colour bassist Doug Wimbish and drummer Will Calhoun and ex-Parliament synth maestro Bernie Worrell - he's trying to transform the sloppy rap-rock hybrid pioneered by bands like Limp Bizkit into legitimate fusion.

It hasn't been easy: At a Roseland show in December, the group muddled through Bob Marley covers. But today, the band falls into a loping groove, with Mos pounding out a syncopated rhythm on Calhoun's drum kit, then plunking sullen chords on the piano, and then belting out the theme from the Batman TV show. When the band settles to a stop, he takes Wimbish's bass and plucks a dubby rhythm: It's "Batman," rewritten as "Blackman," with lyrics about racial profiling. "No, officer," Mos sings, a mock quaver in his baritone, "I don't have a valid driver's license,"

Done kidding around, Mos leads his band into Jimi Hendrix's "Who knows?," trading in some lyrics from Black Sheep's hip-hop hit "The Choice Is Yours." "No, no, no," Mos shouts when Wimbish stops, "not yet." The rhythm picks up again, slowly taking shape as an old Bad Brains song. "Faster," insists Mos, and Calhoun hits out a machine-gun beat as Mos leans into the mike. "That's it!" he declares. "That's some real rock shit."

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