Pop Music : A Mellow Trip ‘Home’ : Michael Franti drops the aggression and evokes soul-R&B; traditions to celebrate community, family.

Out on the basketball court, Marcus Garvey grabs a rebound and gets the ball to point guard Nat Turner, who’s teamed with Huey Newton in the back court. Turner passes to Angela Davis for a backboard-shattering dunk, much to the pleasure of the head coach, Malcolm X.

These black historical figures and famed activists are running their fast breaks in the imagination of rapper and singer Michael Franti. The song, “My Dream Team,” is on the debut album by his new group Spearhead, and it was inspired by the contrast between the defiant gestures by black athletes at the 1968 Olympics and the placid demeanor of the NBA players who went to the Games 24 years later.

“I miss the athletes’ recognition of sports in the social context,” says the San Francisco-based Franti, 27. “I was hopin’ at the (‘92) Olympics like somebody would do something. We had all this turmoil in America, and then there was this team with 10 black athletes who were representing this country. . . . Sports are proxy warfare, and sometimes I want to see somebody fighting for more than just their shoe company. . . . I want to see them stir up some (expletive).”

Activism and athletics are just two of the thematic strands that form Franti’s provocative perspective, which has taken a radically different shape in each of his three outlets.

First was the Beatnigs, a nihilistic industrial-punk band that released its one album in 1988. Then the rap duo Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy produced one memorable album and presented Franti as an articulate, cutting commentator--a sort of cross between Gil Scott-Heron and Public Enemy’s Chuck D.

Despite the acclaim, Franti and his Disposable Heroes partner Rono Tse announced their split earlier this year, citing artistic differences, and Franti proceeded to form the six-piece group Spearhead.

Its album “Home,” due in stores on Tuesday, is a complete break from Franti’s previous musical aggression ( see review on Page 70 ) . Its thick, flavorful grooves and easy rhythms evoke classic soul-R&B; traditions, and its warm, nostalgic edge supports its central themes. It’s an album in which this outsider discovers and celebrates community and family, and it’s the product of a personal odyssey back to his lost “foundations.”

“I don’t feel like I’ve backed off politically,” Franti says. “I just think I’m talking more about life than just about the external side of politics. A lot of times we neglect what’s really important--our kids, our family, our friends--because we’re so caught up with what’s happening with left and right.”

Franti, who was adopted by a white family shortly after his birth, tracked down his biological parents four years ago, but he grew up knowing nothing about them or his heritage.

“I’ve always been on the side of the underdog,” he says. “My mother’s white and my father was black, and she felt that I wasn’t gonna have a chance comin’ out of the box with her family.

“Because of the family that I was raised in, I never felt like I was in the mix. My (adoptive) parents loved me dearly, they did the best they could, but as a kid I felt like an outsider even in my own household.”

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Franti spent his childhood in the Sacramento area, then moved with his family to San Francisco. He played basketball briefly at the University of San Francisco before becoming disillusioned with the exploitation involved in college athletics.

Franti grew up listening to commercial black pop radio, then became captivated by Bob Marley. He later found the musical-political connection in the work of “dub poets” Mutabaruka and Linton Kwesi Johnson and in early rap statements such as “The Message.”

When he gave music a try himself after leaving college, out came the avant-garde broadsides of the Beatnigs, whose album came out on Alternative Tentacles, the label operated by punk icon and anti-censorship hero Jello Biafra.

Franti and fellow Beatnig Tse went on to become the Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy. With Tse creating exotic percussion effects behind Franti’s raps, their 1992 album “Hypocrisy Is the Greatest Luxury” sold modestly but attracted a significant cult following in the college/alternative audience.

Tse has started a new band, Black China, but Franti is the first out of the box. Spearhead has already toured in the United States with the Brand New Heavies, and now the album is ready for the stores.

“Home” includes some straight social comment (“Crime to Be Broke in America”), but its heart is Franti’s slice-of-life vignettes: the thoughts of a man waiting for the results of his AIDS test; descriptions of warm, raucous house parties; detailed accounts of his dietary preferences and of falling in love.

The tone is unfailingly affirmative and reassuring--nowhere more so than in “Of Course You Can,” a rousing anthem of support for young black people--a segment of society so often stigmatized as “lost.”

“ ‘Of Course You Can’ is a song that expresses the confidence vibe,” Franti says. “We’re everywhere and we’re not goin’ away. . . . It really makes me sad when I see stuff on TV or whatever about this ‘lost generation’ of black youth. . . . There’s a lot of us out here who care about what happens to us and who aren’t just gonna sit back passively and allow us to be destroyed as a generation.”

Another reason for the Spearhead’s embracing tone and accessible music is Franti’s desire to reach the black audience. But despite the Disposable Heroes’ militant stance and vital rap, he’s starting at square one.

“Disposable Heroes had an audience, but they were more a fringe or cultish group within hip-hop,” says Jon Shecter, editor-in-chief of the rap magazine the Source. “I’m not aware of a lot of anticipation for Spearhead in the mainstream hip-hop audience.”

For a lifelong underdog like Franti, that’s just fine.

“I’m kind of a veteran, but at the same time this group is brand new, and when we go out on the road people have never heard it. It’s fun to have had a lot of experience and still feel like you’re fresh and your project is new and vital and exciting. Instead of just preaching to the converted, it means I can get what I have to say across to more people.”*