THE English-speaking Welsh will only catch two words on the opener of MC Saizmundo's debut album - ghetto and Wales.

But by then even the most ardent anti-Welsh language Welshman should have got the message.

You can't miss it - 'Wales is crap - the Welsh are crap - so it was, so it is, and so, it seems, it shall be' - this is the mantra from the MC from North Wales on Siberia Cymraeg.

MC Saizmundo is a relatively new rapper from the fold, according to MC Mabon, and his debut album is Blaen Troedar.

On it he challenges us to rise above our current low hum and look at the country with an international perspective.

The album, which translated means A Good Kicking, is vicious and uncompromising from the start.

Track two, Dim Job Yn HTV is caustic, and, one presumes, is concerned with the Taffy Media Maffia.

The TV-media, a devious lot, have often been accused of creating a tidy world for themselves and their mates then making programmes that don't reflect the social deprivation they left behind for tele-taffy land.

Apparently, enterprising folk orchestrate a worthy cause, receive large grants, then disappear into the nether.

MC Saizmundo - one of the left behinds - comes back kicking at the Welsh language service, which is currently facing a precarious future in a world of merger and homogenisation.

Creision goes off at a surreal, quite comical tangent on which MC Saizmundo draws on the strengths of his brothers.

And he shows his playful and humorous side by dealing with the death of Reg Harris, Pobl y Cwm soap actor, in an Eminem Stan-stylee on Terri a Huw.

Cymraeg - Inglish deals with the appalling state of the Welsh language as typically spoken by the Cardiff contingent of the native speaking massive.

"It's a miss-mash covered in an American rash," raps MC Saizmundo (approximately), and never a truer word was spoken.

Listening to any Welsh speaker, as a non-Welsh-speaker, it's always a laugh when they drop in an English phrase like, "Roman occupation". MC Saizmundo, whose Welsh is completely free of any such Anglo-bastardisations, is scathing of his more lazy countrymen.

For effect, on Cymraeg - Inglish, he slips into English-Welsh speak with hilarious results.

MC Saizmundo starts his manifesto for a new perspective on Wales on Mynd Mewn Cylchoedd, which is a deft mix of middle-Eastern and Welsh sounds. A preacher calls his flock to pray but he's calling in Welsh not Arabic and the guitarist plays a faintly eastern sounding riff. The international theme continues on Pwy S'Isio Bod Yn Fawr? - "Countries have no friends only interests" repeats a small boy at the end. MC Saizmundo turns to sex on Un Bys Un Bawd but his PR man is pushing it when he writes it's: "A hitherto taboo subject in Welsh language music"! But it's another corker with the MC rapping over a woman moaning in sexual ecstasy and a cartoon-like, speeded up vocal chorus, leading to a comical, premature ending. He leaves the big challenge to the penultimate track, Saizmundo Yn Erbyn Gweddill Y Byd (Saizmundo Against The Rest Of The World), which unfortunately, he raps like DCI Burnside from the GLC. At the very end America gets a good kicking. "Hello, Oval office", it begins, before he asks why the super-power has to spend so much of its time and money attacking countries smaller than itself.

"Who wants to big," asks the MC to the sound of machine guns, screams and angelic children. It's chillingly apt.

Blaen Troedar has got most things and more. There isn't a moment to spare on its eleven tracks which were recorded from 2001-2003. MC Saizmundo is a relatively new voice in the very vocal, veritable choir of a Welsh-language.

His album has been produced by Dyl Mei (Pep Le Pew) and features guest performances by MC Mabon.

He recorded a session for Radio 1's Session in Wales, some of which can be heard at www.bbc.co.uk/radio1/alt/wales/in_session/031211mc_saizmundo.shtml

MC Saizmundo is live in the Coopers arms, Aberystwyth with MC Mabon on Friday, January 23, then on Saturday, February 7 you'll find him by a phone kiosk in a lay-by on the A470 between Ganllwyd and Trawsfynydd. Surf to www.dockrad.com for more details.