Los Angeles (REUTERS) — In a marketing first for the embattled music industry, rap label Def Jam will soon release a compilation by some of its top artists — not on CD or in a movie, but in a video game.

The hotly anticipated game “Def Jam Vendetta,” pairs Def Jam, a unit of Vivendi Universal’s Universal Music Group, the world’s largest music company, with Electronic Arts Inc., the largest independent video publisher.

The game, due out April 1, features the like of rap stars DMX and Method Man and a storyline that brings together the worlds of wrestling and hip-hop.

“I think that there is an integral relationship between video games and music,” Steve Schnur, who runs music and game audio operations globally for EA, told Reuters recently. “Video gaming is an essential part of the hip-hop lifestyle.”

While putting original music in a video game is not new — Midway Games Inc. did it last year with “Mortal Kombat” — and games about music, like Sony Corp.’s “Frequency,” are common, “Def Jam Vendetta” is the first to try to capitalize on the hip-hop lifestyle, backers said.

By weaving its tracks into a video game aimed at young and predominantly male hip-hop fans, Def Jam hopes to build an audience among those most likely to go out and buy CDs.

For its part, EA’s affiliation with Def Jam brings it credibility among hip-hop fans in the same way that partnerships with sports figures like John Madden and Tiger Woods have boosted its football and golf games.

The release of the jointly backed game comes at a time of diverging fortunes for the video-game business and the music business.

While the games industry topped $10 billion in U.S. sales last year and is on track for double-digit growth in 2003, the music industry has been in a downward spiral in recent years, as CD sales have declined and online file-sharing has made songs readily available for free.

Hip-hop and bodyslams

Although the game carries the “Def Jam” label, it has received more critical praise from the gaming press as a wrestling title than as a musical platform.

“When you look at Def Jam, it’s not necessarily the music, it’s the lifestyle and the culture we partnered with,” Jeff Karp, vice president of marketing at EA Canada, told Reuters recently, adding that the company was pushing the game as hard as million-sellers “Harry Potter” and “Lord of the Rings.”

The game had been set for a March 18 release on Sony’s PlayStation 2 and an April 1 release for Nintendo Co. Ltd.’s GameCube, but in early March, EA pushed back the PS2 version to be simultaneous with the GameCube launch.

That reshuffling took the PS2 version out of EA’s fiscal fourth quarter and into the first quarter of fiscal 2004, a move seen by analysts as an indication of the company’s strength in the quarter ending this month.

‘Fight the power,’ play the game

Def Jam artists like DMX, Ludacris, Method Man and Ghostface Killah were eager to participate in the game, which features their voices and animated likenesses.

Wrestling on an underground circuit as they work their way up to a match with the master thug “D-Mob,” players will have up to 1,500 different moves to throw at opponents, EA said.

They will also be able to groove along with tracks like DMX’s “X Gonna Give It to Ya,” Scarface’s “In Cold Blood” and Public Enemy’s “Fight the Power.”

Just as golf is the medium of choice for closing deals in the corporate world, gaming has become a serious platform for doing business in the world of hip-hop, one executive said.

“Ninety percent of the artists, athletes and entertainers are gamers,” Kevin Liles, the president of Def Jam, told Reuters. “I can’t tell you how many deals were done over PlayStation 2.”