E-Mail This Article to a Friend Beastie grrrls Northern State, three white girls with a rap BY MIKAEL WOOD

It’s an overcast September afternoon at a run-of-the-mill New York City diner, and the Long Island–bred ladies of Northern State are talking very quickly about their new album, All City (Columbia). Truth be told, MCs Hesta Prynn, Spero, and Sprout — or Julie Goodman, Correne Spero, and Robyn Goodmark, as their respective diplomas have it — always talk quickly. But they’re especially speedy at the moment for three reasons: 1) The waitress tending our table has decided that our 15-minute loitering window slammed shut 45 minutes ago; 2) the band have an important business meeting uptown directly following our rendezvous; and 3) It’s Grandma Week, which means everything’s running on high.

Grandma Week is built around the confluence of Rosh Hashanah, an 80th-birthday party, the northward migration of elderly Hurricane Ivan refugees, and lobster dinners at Long Island’s Jolly Fisherman. "I don’t really have to attend the Rosh Hashanah situation," Sprout tells her band mates with obvious glee, "because — let’s face it — I don’t eat brisket."

Almost as soon as Grandma Week ends, two weeks of touring begin. I suspect that this is another reason the women are a little anxious: opening up for sardonic goof-rockers Cake (including a gig next Thursday, October 7, here at the Orpheum), Northern State will be bringing their distinctive brand of whip-smart hip-hop to their widest audience yet — folks unlikely to be familiar with the group’s specific backstory and New York–hipster cachet.

In a way, it’s exactly what the rappers have been waiting for. When Northern State appeared in 2002, playing exuberant live shows around New York and hawking a homemade four-song demo called Hip Hop You Haven’t Heard, the trio got by on concept alone. "No one has done what we’re doing before," says scratchy-voiced Hesta Prynn, the group’s de facto frontwoman. "We’re three white girls doing hip-hop. Nobody knows what that’s like." Indeed, the novelty of the Northern State package was enough to win the group manila folders full of press clips, a well-received mini-album, Dying in Stereo, and, eventually, the attention of Columbia Records, which signed the group last year and bankrolled the production of All City.

The new album is not about concept; it’s about the normalization of these three female rappers’ vision. "We were born to fill pages/We came to rock stages," they announce in "Ignite," All City’s opener. "We plunder and pillage, live in the East Village/Breakin’ it down with this ill fly skillage." And so they do, working a proudly old-school rhyme sensibility flexible enough to drive tales of street-smart third-wave feminism, hard-boiled Noo Yawk mythology, hazy metaphysical introspection, breezy braggadocio, and free-form celebration. "The party gets more crazy as the night gets darker," they observe in "Summer Never Ends," "and I’m out with my girls like Sarah Jessica Parker." You never forget who you’re listening to during the album, but it’s more because of who they are and less because of what they are.

"In the beginning, because it was the culmination of our entire project, we recorded," Sprout says. "We were like, ‘We need to record this so we can hear it back and show it to people.’ And now we made a record. I think there’s a distinction in the intention." "And I think that’s hard for some people to stomach," Spero adds. "I think we were a novelty to a lot of people — even people who liked it — but now we’re demanding membership in a club with real bands."

In addition to the rappers’ more assured performances, the CD features production work by members of the group’s dream-producer list. "We had that list around on e-mail for like a year," Hesta Prynn laughs. "The reason that we had such a high success rate was because we had a realistic list," Spero adds. "We weren’t putting people completely out of our league, but people we respected, people a little bit left of center. I mean, we didn’t have the Neptunes on it."

They did include Pete Rock, who gives "Time To Rhyme" a funky, stripped-down boom-bap, Cypress Hill’s Muggs, who gives "Style I Bring" a trippy, menacing undertow, and ?uestlove of the Roots, who gives "Siren Song" a throbbing electro-soul groove. The women traveled to Philadelphia, LA, and beyond to record the album’s tracks, and though they enjoyed the experience, Hesta Prynn says for their next record, she relishes the thought of hunkering down in one studio with a single production team.

At least they’d keep themselves entertained. The three share an obvious chemistry. When we meet up, they trade stories of wounded cats and trips to Martha’s Vineyard for a good 25 minutes before the questions start rolling. "We haven’t seen each other in a few days, so we have to catch up," Sprout explains. So does the world.

Northern State open for Cake next Thursday, October 7, at the Orpheum, 1 Hamilton Place in Boston; call (617) 228-6000.