STOP the presses, sound the alarms and call the police. Reliable sources indicate that for at least 30 minutes one day last week, Jan Lamb and Eric Kot got serious. Very serious in fact.
''You know, there's not a single mother in Hongkong who is going to tell their child to use a condom,'' said Kot, one half of Commercial Radio's singing, rapping, joking duo the Soft and Hardcore Kids. ''So who will tell them?'' ''This is a topic we have been waiting and waiting to have a chance to touch,'' Lamb said. ''Nobody else will sing this kind of song with this kind of attitude.'' The two were talking about the song Everybody Needs to Lup (a play on the Cantonese slang words for ''love'' and ''protection'') on their chart-topping album Broadcast Drive Fans Murder - the one with the beefcake cover.
And that song, like others dealing with issues such as poverty, record company corruption and the Lan Kwai Fong tragedy is part of their attempt to prove they are more than just a couple of funny faces.
The album, the pair's second and Hongkong's first extended-play Cantonese rap, represents a determined move away from the karaoke-craving pop scene.
''It's our attitude,'' shrugged Kot, the burlier of the two. ''We don't just want to say 'I love you, I love you, oh dear, I hurt you, I hurt you'. We wanted to choose topics.'' ''The material comes from the street, actually,'' Lamb said. ''All the stuff happens around us; it's stuff we feel deeply about. And of course it's our attitude. All these people are doing karaoke - no one is releasing songs about things that are happening around us.'' Serious words, true. But they are couched in the quickfire, slang-filled patter that has taken the Soft and Hardcore Kids from relative obscurity to Broadcast Drive and the hordes of adolescent admirers who wear out their Dr Martens pounding after their idols.
''The song [the title track] is about how they are crazy, screaming and waiting around for their idols,'' Kot said. ''Sometimes they even race after our car in the middle of the street.'' ''The worst thing is when they cry,'' Lamb chipped in. ''We're holding up a mirror to them.'' It's not just Leon Lai Ming the fans want then: our two heroes are right up there in the idol stakes, at least in terms of sales. Broadcast Drive Fans Murder went straight to number one on the local charts. It took the record company, Cinepoly, by surprise. Stocks ran out in record shops, there was a delay in getting replacements out and the album slipped to number three, then four last week.