Rap With a Conscience; Activist groups thrive in Senegal's best neighborhoods.

Byline: Tara Pepper, With Ismaila Dieng in Dakar

Daara J is an unlikely rap group: three middle-class boys from Senegal's capital, Dakar, who met while studying accounting at their local high school. Yet their funky, beguiling album "Boomerang" has topped the world-music charts for the last three months and recently won a BBC World Music Award. They've put Senegal, already a center of rap in Africa, "on the world map," according to record producer and DJ Phil Meadley, who compiled "Global Hip Hop: Beats and Rhymes--The Nu World Culture," a CD released last month. And they've done it with raps that criticize corruption and greed: "Like a boomerang/crime returns to the criminals/Their system sows ignorance vice and hatred." Their cry for social change is a world away from rap's more familiar celebration of bitches and bling bling, guns and gangland feuds.

Daara J--which means "school of life" in the Wolof language--is at the forefront of a new wave of activist rap. As hip-hop's audience has grown--almost doubling in the United States since 1998--and Grammy winners like Eminem and OutKast have attracted mainstream followings, there's increasing demand for more varied sounds and styles. "Rap's become very pop, and kids are starting to look for something new. [Artists] will come through from the underground now," says Simon Gavin, director of A&R at Polydor Records.

Those new acts are likely to hail from unexpected corners of the world, says Gavin--especially Africa. Senegal alone has more than 2,000 established rap groups in a population of 10 million. The first Pan-African compilation album, "The Rough Guide to African Rap," was released just last month and artists like Positive Black Soul and JJC & 419 Squad are cementing Africa's reputation in Europe as a center for cutting-edge rap. Daara J band member Faada Freddy says rap, which has roots in the West African griot storytelling tradition, has come full circle: "It started in Africa, grew up in America, and now it's come back."

Unlike U.S. pioneers whose rage-filled, often misogynistic outbursts sprang from tense, impoverished inner cities, Senegal's groups first flourished in the 1990s in Dakar's smarter neighborhoods. Gradually, they won over ...