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IN BETWEEN languorous sips of cognac, West speaks easily, eloquently, and freely about why he's chosen to put his message on disc. "There are some people who say, 'How could you do a CD about hip-hop culture when you're an intellectual?' " he says. "I tell them that I'm concerned about putting forward forms of criticism and self-criticism in a variety of different forms. It could be television. Television has been very kind to me. C-SPAN has been very kind to me. It could be radio. It could be poetry or performance. It could be teaching in a classroom."

"I'm primarily a teacher, and I want to be able to communicate to people," he adds, intently picking through a bowl of mixed nuts. "I have a Socratic function, primarily, which is to unsettle and to unnerve people. I get them to think." With the CD, West explains, he hopes to remind the younger generation about "the struggle for freedom and stories about that struggle." Then, he says, we'll "see what they make of it."

It's a little unclear who he's targeting, though. Asked whether he's trying to reach people he doesn't get to in his classes and books, he responds, "There's some overlap because you've got a lot of the hip-hop generation who do read, they read Race Matters and so forth. But there's ones who haven't read Race Matters." He trails off. "It's a CD that, really because it's primarily concerned with truth and justice and hope, it hits on that human level." Later he adds, "In the end, what we want is Americans across communities of color."

A few minutes after that, West clarifies his ultimate aim. "I want to be a force for good. That's the bottom line. Many times you could be a force for good when you sell a lot of albums. There's no doubt about that. And I hope we sell many albums."

If anyone seems well equipped to bridge the gap between academia and pop culture, it's certainly West, who's appeared regularly on TV with both Oprah and Bill Moyers. The names he drops in a matter of minutes include Anton Chekhov, Ralph Nader, Count Basie, and KRS-One (he's finishing up a book about Chekhov and John Coltrane). He counts as "dear friends and brothers" men as diverse as Puffy, who listened to West's album the night before he took the stand for his January trial on charges of weapons possession and bribery; Michael Lerner, the editor of Tikkun magazine, with whom he co-wrote Jews and Blacks: Let the Healing Begin (Putnam, 1995); and Colin Powell.

At the same time, cozying up to celebrities, and politicians is far from being West's only preoccupation. He is earnestly generous with his time, often remaining after class for over an hour to talk with students. When he was a few minutes late arriving at Rialto, he apologized profusely; walking across Harvard Square, he'd been engaged by several people he knew who wanted to talk. And when a waitress comes over to take his drink order, he offers her his hand. "It's good to see you," he says, with genuine pleasure. "Good to see you. You're lookin' good - like always."

Pacing back and forth during class, squatting for effect, and gesturing wildly to punctuate his points as he lectures about hegemony, resistance, and "cultural hybridity," West combines the dramatic gestures of an actor with the rhetorical tools he picked up in the "funky black Baptist" church of his childhood - soothing, mesmerizing triplets of synonyms are a favorite. Even his ever-present three-piece suit is a conscious part of a multi-faceted identity that meshes jazz, religion, and politics. "For me, it's a matter of uniform on the battlefield," West says of his clothes. "And it's a matter of connecting to jazz musicians like early Miles - he's always sharp. Duke Ellington, Count Basie, they're always sharp. Sarah Vaughan, of course, she dressed like a queen - actually, she was a queen. And black preachers." He pauses. "It's a fusion."

WHEN SPEAKING about Sketches of My Culture, critics and scholars tend to discount quality in favor of intent. The tracks range from catchy soul nuggets like "70's Song" and "Elevate Your View" to slightly maudlin efforts like "N-Word" and "3Ms," but their stylistic merits don't seem to be the point. Instead, most say that by taking his prestigious name to a recording studio, risking musical critique instead of intellectual commentary, West committed a daring and even noble act. "He takes risks, and not everyone will," says Richard Newman, research officer at the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute.

West "is trying to be a bridge figure between a resourceful past and a resonant present," explains Michael Eric Dyson, a professor of African-American studies at DePaul University and the author of the new Holler if You Hear Me: Searching for Tupac Shakur (Basic Books). "I think that's a good thing - to drop science and spread wisdom. And that's the obligation of any elder."

William Jelani Cobb, a visiting assistant professor in the history department at Spelman College and a critic for the Washington Post, the Washington City Paper, and Essence, agrees. Although he finds the album "mediocre artistically," the point, he insists, is that West is opening up a necessary form of communication between two generations. "Cornel West thinks that black music has been a repository for uplifting and elevating affirmation," he says, noting that West laments the decline of that function. "He's putting his money where his mouth is, trying to produce a cultural product." Cobb adds, "He's one of a handful of academics who seeks a broader audience, and who's as interested in talking to black people as talking about them."

Among the mere handful of people who've publicly criticized West, the common theme has been that the professor stretches himself too thin. In a scathing piece in the Village Voice in 1995, Adolph Reed called West "a thousand miles wide and two inches deep." And earlier that year, in the New Republic, Leon Wieseltier charged that West's message was too abstruse: "If crisis requires anything, it is clarity; but West's conception of the intellectual vocation is too complicated for clarity."

DePaul's Dyson, however, considers West's broad spread an asset, one that allows him to speak to a varied public. West's skill, he says, is "to take as wide a view as possible of the cultural landscape, to bring edification, enlightenment, and critique to bear in ways that further the goals of liberation."

Hip-hop, says Dyson, has "reached an apex in terms of its commercialism and impact." At the same time, "in terms of its artistic evolution, it continues to grow ... there's room to grow and to be challenged. I don't think it's at its lowest point and I don't think it's past its high point." In that climate, he says, "people are interested in these issues and bridging the gulf. People are hungry for this."

Still, this is a mostly sober CD that lacks peppy party jams, and the upcoming video is sure to be without thongs. Will there be room for it on the less-than-socially-conscious pop charts? "You hope so," West muses. "You don't know. That's a good question." Dyson, however, is more certain that the album will have an impact, no matter how many copies it sells: "Cornel West is a very important figure in black America, and as such whatever he does will have an impact and will be significant." If West forces young people to think about issues in new ways, Dyson adds, "that will be a big impact."

AT THE end of Harvard's hip-hop forum - after Charles Ogletree urges the hundreds in attendance to go out and buy West's "hip-hop lecture" - students line up at microphones to ask him questions. They ask whether hip-hop needs to come from the ghetto, whether the genre is on a downward slope or simply in its infancy, whether it's possible to sell albums without being misogynistic and homophobic. West launches into vicious responses about gangster activities, hip-hop as a "laboratory." He says he plans to promote the message that it's possible to be hip and young and politically engaged at once. Throughout, he darts around the stage, making wide, sweeping motions with his arms, affecting theatrical, emphatic expressions and voices.

Winding down at the end, he grins. "I still didn't answer your question," he says gleefully, though by now it's not clear who he's talking to. The crowd roars and claps. West surveys the audience, his hand cupping his chin, his finger stroking his cheek.

Nina Willdorf can be reached at nwilldorf[a]phx.com