Hot Action Cop singer/guitarist/leader Rob Werthner has a crazy amount of musical influences. There's a lot of Fishbone and Red Hot Chili Peppers in the Nashville-based quartet's hedonistic, harmony-soaked sound,coupled with a Dirty South mentality. Hot Action Cop's self-titled debut is equal parts hip-hop and punk-funk energy. Joined in his quest for a balls-out good time by guitarist Tim Flaherty, bassist Luis Espaillat, and drummer Kory Knipp, Werthner is a versatile front-man who can pull off both syncopated rapping and blue-eyed falsetto without letting either get in the way of the song. Hot Action Cop's debut album is like a pre-made mixtape, with styles bumping and grinding against each other. The disc opens with the relatively straightforward metallic funk of "Doom Boom," before exploring various directions, all rooted in hedonism and party-starting grooves. From the Jackson 5-styled funky intro of "Don't Want Her to Stay," to the gutter-minded and infectiously catchy "Fever for the Flava," or the mid-tempo rocker "Busted" and the twisted groove of "Show Her," Hot Action Cop doesn't let up on the energy or enthusiasm until closing time. Werthner turns out the lights with the album's closing track, "In a Little While," a drum machine and acoustic guitar-flavored song that would be equally at home on a Beck or Everlast record. Werthner is a lot like his songs, holding nothing back and pulling no punches.

What's the story behind the band's name?
I wanted a name with a little bit of irreverence that would make people scratch their heads. This girl I used to go out with started dating a guy in the NYPD, back in the early-1990s and he had a full-on, bi-level, feathered back haircut, kind of an advanced mullet. It was so out of date and out of place, and we called him "Hot Action Cop," when he came strolling into the bar we hung out at.

What's a guy from Queens doing in Nashville playing in a crazy-ass rock band?
I was playing in New York, had some good excitement going, I just had a hard time getting it off the ground. I moved down to Tennessee because it's a lot smaller, you get noticed a lot quicker. I could concentrate on my shit and have a good time. As soon as I got to Nashville, the vibe was different. People aren't starving themselves to try and look good,people are just living. Decking their cars out, big stereo systems, all that stuff. And the hip-hop, it's not necessarily more party-oriented, but it's more real to what the people are doing down there. This was about two years ago and I had some heavy shit happening. I laid down some songs, the phone started ringing and I had to solidify a band.

How did the band come together?
Kory and Luis came down when I was laying down tracks in the studio, almost as pick-up guys. We sounded great, they had great attitudes, so I was like, "Shit man, let's see if they want to come in and join in on the band. We wanted to add a guitar player who could play seven string, to make it thicker and meaner. And Tim was someone who we'd known for a long time.

What's the story with the record?
Because I'm not trying to be any one particular thing, anything is an influence on me. Not even necessarily music. I tend to write on the guitar, so everything will have a slight rockish edge to it,there's no way around it. There's hip-hop at the top, it stretches to a little R&B, a little soul, a little reggae flavoring and by the very end it just mellows out in that acoustic piece ("In a Little While"). "Fever for the Flava" is obviously influenced by Dirty South hip-hop. You've got to have that one hook line that they throw out over and over again to a beat that gets everybody moving. "Flava" is, Fever for the flavor of the coochie.' I wanted to add something a little weird, so I added ‘Yo, hey momma hoochie' to rhyme with it. The rest of the song built from that point. More than anything, the record came out a little heavier than when I first started writing it. It really punches at you, it really cuts...percussion as well as lyrically.

Is it all about sex?
Well...75% of it has a lot to do with sex.

How much of the lyrics come from your life then?
It definitely comes from a reaction to different girls that I've dated. When I first moved to Tennessee, after I broke up with the girl that I moved there with, I was dating about seven different girls at the same time. It became nightmarish. I was straight up with all of them, telling them that I was seeing other people, and girls always tell you they're cool with it, and then all of the sudden they're not cool with it. There are one or two girls in particular that affect five or six tunes on the record. That's where a lot of the sexual aspect starts from, but it's also a way to bring in something interesting to people who aren't into songwriting.

What about the image of white guys playing hip-hop inflected rock?
I'm not really a musician; I love to write music, I love to play music. I don't give a fuck otherwise. You're not going to see me with dangly jewelry and all this kind of shit, trying to be half feminine and half cool. I really don't give a fuck. I like the ethics of punk rock and to me, hip-hop has that same kind of vibe, just on the other side of the street. The energy is all the same. It's all up in your face. I don't necessarily care about the image of the band, our image is pretty much, "I'm going to do what I want and fuck you." That's pretty much it. Three years down the road, hip-hop might not be an influence on my songs. One thing I want to make sure is that in every song I do there's something about it that listeners can dig and something about it that I dig. It's not just me spilling out my soul because some girl crushed my nuts. I'm not the guy with the long hair smoking cigarettes letting everybody know how damaged my soul is.

Do you think your diverse sound will shake people up?
If you listen to early Chili Peppers or Fishbone, there's a lot of diversity. And as a listener, it never crossed my mind that one thing shouldn't be with another. What I try to do is throw some different stuff together, hopefully some things people can't identify. You either like the song or you don't; you either like the record or you don't,it's as simple as that. I don't want to make something that's "Hey, look at me, I'm an artist..." It's more for the listeners. I would love to sell 10 million records, not because it would make me rich or some shit, but because that means 10 million people bought your fucking record because they liked something.

What's the live show like?
It has a lot more punk energy. It's loud, it's abrasive. We make an effort to sound somewhat like the record though. Sometimes we jam out, throw in some covers, not necessarily obscure covers. We do a heavy version of Pink Floyd's "Comfortably Numb" and a slightly heavy version of "Could You Be Loved" by Bob Marley.