A few months ago, High Point's Fantasia Barrino cut her ties with the American Idol management company, which had guided her after she won the TV show's competition in 2004, the show's third season. She now works with Violator, the company that guides Missy Elliott, 50 Cent and Three 6 Mafia.
Accordingly, her second album, Fantasia, is outwardly less bubblegum R B than her first.
That doesn't necessarily mean better - the quality peaks in "Hood Boy," the first track and single, distinguished by raw shouting on the choruses and a couple of stanzas rapped by Big Boi from Outkast.
The overall disc gets closer to vanguard hip-hop on a surface level, with a shallower sound, bigger and clankier percussion noises, better background beeps and sirens, and more obscure soul sampling sculptured into abrupt cuts.
Fantasia's fallback has always been gospel.
She is an excellent shouter, with a little voice writ large, and can achieve nearly instant liftoff in her singing. But this disc moves her away from the gospel-R B continuum into sleeker territory.
"Not the Way That I Do" is anchored by kettledrum pounding.
"Uneligible" has something guitarlike running through it like a synthetic Yardbirds riff, and "Bore Me (Yawn)" edges closer to The Meters. These are small, but energized achievements - and they are free of cliche.
Fantasia has not given up the overwrought feelings that endeared her to America - she would be crazy to do so.
The ballad "Bump What Ya Friends Say," written by Elliott, pushes her in the overwrought direction, and "I Feel Beautiful," written by Diane Warren and produced by Babyface, is a self-help anthem for beleaguered women.
If you like: Motown, with Broadway flair
Those who prize Beyonce Knowles for her involvement with pop's musical vanguard will have to hold their breath and wait for Dreamgirls to pass. The film, based on the hit Broadway play, is Jennifer Hudson's show, she of American Idol fame.
She plays Effie, and it's her huge-gesture vocal performances that dominate this soundtrack.
The songs, written mostly by Henry Krieger and Tom Eyen and slightly refigured from the play's original arrangements, are Motown-style show tunes, with tour de force moments when the characters stand their ground. Hudson's "And I Am Telling You I'm Not Going" is one such moment.
After building up her energy for half the song, Hudson delivers one hollered, long-held, wide vibrato note after another for about three minutes, and the song keeps cresting to the next Himalayan peak.
By contrast, fans of Knowles' rhythmically slicing vocal style have to satisfy themselves with "It's All Over." Knowles' vocal is taut with rhythmic muscle, with little flex between nearly every syllable before it ends with a graceful outflowing.
At 73, singer/songwriter Willie Nelson, though in a position to rest on his iconic status, has continued to explore and assimilate, seeking to put his Texas stamp on everything from reggae to jazz. That the results are mixed is almost beside the point; Nelson's willingness to experiment is to be celebrated.
Nelson's latest foray into the unknown is Songbird, an album steered by Ryan Adams, alt-country's misfit darling (and a native of North Carolina).
Adams plucked Nelson from his comfort zone, picking songs odd and fascinating while substituting his band, The Cardinals, for Nelson's band. Old fans may squirm at Adams' deft use of howls of feedback, or question his decision to toss Nelson such improbable songs as Fleetwood Mac's "Songbird" or Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah."
But by and large, it works, as Nelson rises to the occasion, working his laid-back magic on songs by Gram Parsons, the Grateful Dead and Adams while revisiting and adding strong songs of his own.
The result: Nelson's most convincing album in years, proving, that it's spirit, not age, that matters most.
Label: Warner Bros.
Brian McKnight is smooth, silky - and just a little cheesy.
It's right there on Ten, a new disc that finds veteran lover McKnight reaching for an old-school sound with subtle shades of Motown.
He puts the moves on every lovely lady in sight, cooing with low-key lust over deep gooey bass lines and thumpy rhythm. On one track, he is taunting an ex-lover's new beau, on another, he's despairing because he can't seem to shake her memory.
But it's not all candles and soft-talk seduction.
McKnight mourns bad timing on the melancholy "A Little Too Late," and he drapes himself in patriotism on the soft-rock ballad "Red, White and Blue," which he sings from the perspective of soldiers overseas yearning for their lives at home.
McKnight built his success by avoiding the explicit.
He hints at naughtiness - "taking my time, sexing your mind," he moans on "Comfortable" - but he never actually causes offense, unless you object to songs that are on the schmaltzy side. And if you find that offensive, well, then McKnight's not singing to you anyway.
Heavy metal survives by feeding on its own cliched bombast, which makes it at once easy fodder for satire and, oddly, impervious to it.
It is this dichotomy that fuels Tenacious D, the semi-satirical folk/heavy-metal duo of comedians/actors Jack Black and Kyle Gass. The Pick Of Destiny is their soundtrack to the movie of the same name, a heavy-metal comedy that attempts, through parody, to become what it pokes fun at - and almost succeeds. Of course, that's a big almost.
The songs, well informed in the way of heavy-metal warriors, are little more than sketches that move the plot along with unflagging foul-mouthed aplomb. There are funny moments - arrested adolescence required - and Black's hapless metallic screeching is so earnest that it sells the plot, such as it is. But the disc's real pleasure is listening to Dave Grohl (Nirvana, Foo Fighters) have a large time playing drums - and, memorably, Satan.
That Black and Gass clearly love the music they skewer makes the disc an inspired, idiotic, stoner-ready cliche fest worth hearing - once.
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