My best friend called me up because he had received a CD burner and a DSL line for Christmas, which is a bad combination to begin with, and he wanted to know if I had any albums to recommend for his newborn music-stealing frenzy. I immediately answered, “”Kids’ Rockin’ Rappin’ Gospel!””

I received the CD for my birthday and did not think much of it at the time. I’m not really one for joke presents, especially when there isn’t a real present after the joke present, which was exactly the scenario in this case. My friend had just started working at a record store, so I expect he snagged it before anybody else could get to it. Either that or it was sitting in a box collecting dust and he invoked his 30 percent employee discount to get it down to 70 cents.

The cover is pretty enticing. At the top, it says “”Kids’ Rockin’ Rappin’ Gospel!”” with a dove. To the right it says, “”Twenty Bible Songs!”” because everyone wants a lot of Bible songs (a dozen really wouldn’t be enough). My favorite is at the bottom: “”Today’s Sound for Today’s Kids!”” If “”Rockin’ Rappin’ Gospel”” is “”Today’s Sound for Today’s Kids””, I’m no longer embarrassed by anything I listened to when I was 10. I always thought “”Today’s Sound for Today’s Kids”” was just edited pop songs, like Christina Aguilera’s “”Genie in a Bottle”” without the sexual innuendos.

I remember I was at Disneyland and they were playing that Chumbawamba song, except they had changed all the lyrics so that it wasn’t a drinking song any more — it was really just about pizza and soft drinks. It was pretty disturbing, but now I realize I didn’t know what disturbing really was until I saw the cover of “”Kids’ Rockin’ Rapping Gospel.”” In the middle, it has a drawing of a white girl, a black guy with his cap turned around with a pink boom box and the obligatory Asian kid, all rappin’. Or rather, rockin’ and rappin’.

I always thought Cibo Matto was funny, because hey — Japanese rap — but Christian rap? More specifically, Christian kids’ rap? My friend and I put the CD in his CD player and laughed uncontrollably for about 10 minutes. Ever since that day, I’ve kept it in my car and whenever someone new gets in, I say, “”Want to listen to some Rockin’ Rappin’ Gospel?”” and play my favorite tracks. The second track, “”O, How I Love Jesus””, is a pretty solid song and a good introduction to the CD. Most people react by saying, “”Umm. Hee hee. That’s pretty funny. We’re not really going to listen to this are we?”” This is the point at which I switch to track five, “”God Is So Good””, turn the bass up, the windows down and the child safety lock on.

“”God Is So Good”” is an innovative song because it only has four lines: “”God is so good / He’s so good to me / He answers prayers, he answers prayers / He cares for me, He cares for me / I love him so, I love him so.”” As the chorus chants “”God is so good, he’s so good to me,”” the kids take turns “”rappin'”” the other three lines.

This gets old pretty damn fast, which leads me to the 12th track, “”Jesus Loves the Little Children””. My favorite part of the song is “”Red and yellow, black and white. They are precious in His sight. Jesus loves the little children of the world.”” It’s mostly my favorite part of the song because that’s the only part in the song. What I think the Wonder Kids are trying to say here is that Jesus loves the little children of the world, even the Native American Asian mulatto ones, but not the homosexual ones, because they are paganistic heathens that deserve to burn in everlasting hell.

One thing I discovered with the CD is that after the 20th track, the songs start over in split-track, with the vocals on the left stereo speaker and the music on the right speaker. So you can turn down the vocals and sing along, or, as the liner notes say, “”This means the soloist you heard on songs 1 through 20 can be turned off so that you can be the soloist! It’s great fun and the lyrics are right here! Now you can take your CD player to school, church, or anywhere and be a star with split-track! Great fun … great singing … great idea!””

According to Webster’s guide to grammar and writing, “”An exclamation point is used rarely, if at all, and in newspaper writing the exclamation point is virtually nonexistent.”” Well, I’ll be! I had no idea!

This truly is the most entertaining CD I’ve ever owned in my life, and I highly recommend it to anyone with $4.27 lying around. It’s available at http://www.cdnow.com under “”Wonder Kids: Rockin’ Rappin’ Gospel.”” I’d like to end on a positive note: Jesus loves you.