By MICHAEL QUINN/Reported by Wendy Cole

From Ice Cube to Ice-T, Rap artists are adding a new number to their repertoire: "Hooray for Hollywood!" The cinema's latest hip-hop hunk is TUPAC SHAKUR, playing a rapper-postal worker wooing a poet-hairdresser (Janet Jackson) in John Singleton's currently shooting Poetic Justice. Meanwhile, Shakur's hit rap single, Brenda's Got a Baby, based on the true-life travails of a pregnant 12-year-old, has kids in crisis writing to the rapper. "They identify with me and all that pain growing up poor. We need someone who's been through that and escaped." You'll do fine, 2Pac.