The Message

In a city asking itself tough questions about street violence and how to combat it, the most eloquent voices just might be those heard on a new music video starring four rap artists intimately familiar with Boston's mean streets -- and whose mission, they say, is to sell peace as aggressively as other rappers peddle sex and violence.

``If not us, who?" Antonio Ennis (a.k.a. Twice Thou ) asks at the conclusion to ``Start Peace," a video version of the song recorded last winter by his group 4Peace . ``If not now, when?"

Elsewhere on the 4 1/2- minute video, Wyatt ``Mo 'gee" Jackson raps: ``Just because I'm doing this, I'm not pretending/My hood's gonna have some fake Disney happy ending . . . But I'm managing my feelings through the blessing of hip-hop/A culture of momentum and you see that it won't stop."

Catchy song. Slick video. Uplifting message. With supporters like Mayor Thomas Menino (who has a cameo in the video), music promoter Don Law , and John Rosenthal of Stop Handgun Violence, 4Peace can count on heavy exposure. Their video will be screened at the upcoming International Association of Chiefs of Police convention in Boston and at a separate ceremony on Sunday honoring MBTA police chief Joseph Carter's installation as IACP president, where the group will also perform.

The artists admit, though, that rolling out the video is only one step in a long campaign to transform a culture where violence is too often tolerated, if not glorified. The guns and the grudges are still out there, they acknowledge. It's the message about what's ``cool" that has to change, or more lives will be needlessly lost.

``It can't be a one-season program," Jackson says during a group interview at Modernista , a Boston advertising agency lending its support to the anti-violence effort. ``We hit a home run" with the song, he adds. ``Now we have to run the bases."

Already in the plans are workshops and video screenings at inner-city high schools, and live performances at hip-hop venues around the Northeast. The group learned yesterday that it will appear on Comcast's New Year's Eve broadcast, with which they could reach an audience of millions.

Ennis agrees that there's much more to be done .

``The question is, is peace marketable? Yes, because violence is marketable," Ennis says. ``If you don't try, and I mean really try, then you're basically a quitter."

The four artists -- Edward Anderson (a.k.a. Edo.G ) and Deric Quest (DQuest) make up the rest of 4Peace -- have gathered to discuss their roles in the grassroots peace movement and where it goes from here. All four spent parts of their youths in Roxbury or and know the challenges facing city kids today. And all have achieved enough success in the music business to guarantee their message of peace and positivity will be heard -- if not heeded.

Quest and Jackson are former partners in the R&B-flavored group Here & Now . Anderson fronted Edo.G and Da Bulldogs, whose 1991 album featured the hit ``I Got to Have It." Ellis, a songwriter, performer, and fashion designer, has previously worked with RSO and MadeMen . Collectively the four have written for, recorded, and toured with stars like Master P, Faith Evans, Snoop Dogg, and Kid Rock.

Rosenthal calls them ``the right messengers with the right message and the street cred" to reach 14- to 25-year-olds surrounded by violence on a daily basis.

``We never had the right spokesmen until I met these guys," says Rosenthal, whose organization's anti-handgun billboard on the Mass. Pike provides a backdrop for one scene in the video. ``It was an `aha' moment for me."

The galvanizing moment for 4Peace happened last December, when four members of the rap group Graveside were gunned down in a Dorchester home. One of the victims, Edwin ``E.J." Duncan , 21, had worked in Ennis's Dorchester clothing store. Ennis was fresh from his own public controversy -- after criticism from community leaders, he'd agreed to stop selling a line of ``Stop Snitchin' " T-shirts at his store -- and had grown alarmed by Boston's rising murder rate. When he and Jackson ran into each other at an anti-violence rally last winter, both were primed to take action.

A mutual friend approached Jackson and Ennis, urging them to record a song together. ``It hit me that this was the thing I should be doing," Jackson recalls.

In January, Anderson and Quest joined Jackson and Ennis in the recording studio. The song ``Start Peace" was finished a few weeks later, but the video would take another six months to complete. Tony Bennis , a veteran marketing consultant and film-TV producer, was hired to oversee production. Reebok kicked in some much-needed funds, and scheduling conflicts among the artists were smoothed over to facilitate shooting. The finished video includes scenes from Dorchester's Greater Love Tabernacle Church and the Suffolk County House of Corrections.

How closely do the four identify with the audience they hope to reach?

``I was very at-risk, and I grew up in the church," says Quest, who was raised in the Grove Hall area by a single mom. ``I knew all the drug runners. I was making these same decisions every day."

Anderson, who grew up on Humboldt Avenue, remembers when a nightclub fight broke out years ago between his crew and Ennis's. Today the two men are close friends, Anderson says, proof that ego battles and turf wars don't have to end violently.

``We're doing this from the ground up," says Anderson. ``We're right there with these kids."

Three of the rappers are also fathers now. Ennis says he thought about how he'd feel if one of his own daughters were assaulted and no one stepped forward to testify. All four were also deeply moved by Kai Leigh Harriott , the Dorchester girl paralyzed in 2003, who showed up in court last April and forgave the man who accident al ly shot her.

``People are tired of seeing the bloodshed," says Ennis. ``They're good kids out there. But how long will it be before even the good kids pick up a gun and decide not to take the long way around to get home?"

Anderson insists entertainment companies like Viacom and Clear Channel must be held accountable as well for disseminating messages and images that feed the violence. As for ``Start Peace," he says, ``I've been a recording artist for 15 years, and no record I've made has had the same emotional impact for me."

The four harbor no illusions that peace will be an easy sell. Or that a culture that profits from violence won't push back hard against a countervailing message. To illustrate, Jackson gets up and re enacts a scene from ``The Untouchables," in which federal agents stand outside a door poised to get the bad guys waiting on the other side.

``We're in trouble," says Jackson, pressed against a conference room door. ``Once this door opens, we're going to [tick] some people off." To succeed, he adds with a bit of Hollywood bravado, ``We have to be the best. We can't stand in that doorway scared."

Joseph P. Kahn can be reached at jkahn@globe.com.