Scherazade Daruvalla King, executive director of Project: Think Different, has a crazy idea: She thinks she can persuade commercial media outlets to promote urban music that doesn’t shamelessly endorse sex, drugs and violence.

But maybe King and her nonprofit teammates aren’t bonkers.

Socially progressive rappers such as Common and Immortal Technique are moving significant units around the globe; Boston acts such as Audible Mainframe and The Foundation Movement have kids from the South End to Cambridge embracing positive vibes.

Sunday at Harpers Ferry, Project: Think Different will unveil its ‘‘emPOWERment: The Power to Break You Free” CD. It’s a compilation of some of Beantown’s most high-minded artists, including Lyrical, Soulfege, Sophia Snow, The Foundation Movement, MC Exposition, Iyeoka Okoawo, Velvet Stylus, Shuman and Sad Marvin & Heist. King’s objective was simple: promote local talents whose lyrical content answers to a higher calling than most contemporary hip-hop.

‘‘We really want to amplify the messages of socially conscious artists who have been doing this work since before we even started as an organization,” King said. ‘‘We need to popularize a culture of engagement and action versus a lot of things that are currently being popularized. We’re about shifting the pop culture. Making more mainstream the themes of activism, civic engagement. And empowering people to step fully into their roles as change agents.”

Some contributions on ‘‘emPOWERment” directly address the negative messages Think Different hopes to counter. On ‘‘Neva Go Platinum,” Boston rapper Mingo tells the story of an MC who compromises his gift to fit the thug stereotype. Trumpeting rhymesayer AfroDZak of the group Eclectic Collective takes a different approach: He smacks the powers that be for keeping kids ignorant and apathetic.

On ‘‘Thinking Cap,” AfroDZak rhymes ‘‘It’s testing my patience, this mess in this nation, Where our kids get more brainwashing and less education, they leave mad children behind, never searchin’ for a remedy, and even those who ain’t make it, ain’t taught to think independently.”

While looking to change the system, Think Different also maneuvers behind enemy lines. The organization measures its success by how many outlets air its message - even if some of those outlets are largely responsible for the unenlightened state of the music they’re combating.

‘‘We’re working with MTV and some other outlets that perpetuate the mainstream culture that we’re not for,” King said. ‘‘We’re demonstrating by working with them that there is a viable audience for this kind of music. We’re creating change from the inside out and from the outside in.”

Think Different program manager Melissa Krodman said that reaching young people who love negative, misanthropic hip-hop is the biggest challenge. ‘‘Socially conscious music proliferates in certain circles,” she said, ‘‘but it’s very difficult to get it heard outside of those circles. We get our message around through the Internet, by accumulating as many friends as possible through MySpace, by giving CDs out to various people in Boston, doing some street marketing and just trying to get the album as visible as possible amongst the youth.”

King said that while her short-term goal is to push the ‘‘emPOWERment” CD along with her organization’s message of engagement, the long-term objective is to eliminate the need for Think Different all together.

‘‘One day I would like to think that Project: Think Different will no longer need to exist,” she said. ‘‘Hopefully we’ll have a media that recognizes that it needs to be in alignment with our values for women, men, youth, respect and diversity.”

The ‘‘emPOWERment” CD release party featuring Foundation Movement, Lyrical and others, at Harpers Ferry in Allston on Sunday May 14, 2006. $5.