NOT content with being multi-millionaire backroom boys, Pharrell Williams and Chad Hugo, aka supremely successful production and songwriting team The Neptunes, step out of the shadows as N*E*R*D.

Fly Or Die, their second album, sees the dynamic duo dump the high-tech hip-hop of The Neptunes and pick up drumsticks and guitars to indulge in some strutting funk-rock. Don't Worry About It sets the blueprint - rampantly randy rhythms, falsetto vocals and squalling guitar riffs, a formula they refine on hot-under-the-collar single She Wants To Move.

Think Prince or Lenny Kravitz making an overt attempt to woo the rock audiences of Jane's Addiction or the Red Hot Chili Peppers. However, N*E*R*D play it a little too safe, as they try to crack the rock market, whereas kindred hip-hop visionaries, such as OutKast and Common, pillage pop history with greater panache.

Cypress Hill were one of the first rap groups to really cross over to rock fans, back in the Nineties, and Till Death is their best album for years.

Their lyrics may still be obsessed with petty ghetto thuggery and smoking industrial quantities of illicit herbs, but their grimy worldview now seems quite refreshing against the money-obsessed posturing of today's rap stars.

Musically they're on top form, breaking up the hardcore hip-hop with Latin rhythms and reggae beats, and even conscripting Tim Armstrong from punk rockers Rancid to "borrow" The Clash's Guns Of Brixton as the backing for What's Your Number?

Updated: 09:35 Thursday, April 15, 2004