For a woman with such a fierce rep, Jennifer Lopez has a voice that completely lacks bite; Britney Spears' processed burbling sounds fanged by comparison. J.Lo's unimposing la-la-la is more of a setback than ever on her latest set, where she's trying out her pipes on more ballads (still can't deliver on those, unfortunately) and cuts that strive to strike a balance between sultry softness and ass-kicking attitude. The only time the album comes close to working is on obviously single-bound tracks produced slickly enough to convince you that girlfriend's million-dollar booty is shaking somewhere in the electronics. "Whatever You Wanna Do" sounds like pure summertime fun, and so does the bouncy, sexy, silly "Cherry Pie," which finds the ever-married diva wondering, "Damn, why do the wild ones turn me on?" It's not clear, however, why La Lopez sees any of this as "rebirth," unless she's acknowledging that a lot of it sounds like recycled, late-period Sheena Easton hip-hop humping Janet Jackson's leg. "Get Right," the lead single, is the best thing here, featuring a dirty beat and the funkiest horn hook intro since Beyoncé's "Crazy in Love" (which everyone involved has evidently studied several times)— Jennifer's croon is still too weak to really carry it off, but the song gives you a solid 3:45 of bump and grind anyway. STEVE WIECKING
VARIOUS ARTISTS/MIXED BY STEVE BUG
Steve Bug Presents Bugnology
(Poker Flat)
david black
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A certain tension always exists between a DJ and his or her records: Will the mixer dominate the mix, or the mixed? At one extreme are DJs who just want to showcase the tracks that make them love music; at the other end are turntablists who employ records as tools in building their own compositions. To map the well-trod middle, picture Jeff Mills frenetically playing the best minute or half-minute of record after record, tossing them in a pile as he goes, and try to decide whether he's honoring those records or pillaging them. Bugnology gives similar grounds for pause. For his third mix CD, Poker Flat boss Stefan Bruegesch brought 20 tip-top recent minimal house and techno tracks to his studio and used his software to bend them to his will. The result is an unusually unified mix, consistent without being monotonous. Tracks are edited, layered, rearranged, but never lose their character. The chunky percussion and melody of Justin Martin's "The Sad Piano" remain intact. If I:Cube's "Oblivion" bass line is slowed down to jungle depths and added to the track that precedes it, so much the better. And whether that staticky mess that transforms into a beat in Kango's Stein Massiv's "Saltvan" is on the record or all Bug's doing, it sounds great. Is it egotistical to name a mix after yourself, or to spend nearly eight minutes of it showing that you can give its most recognizable track (Justus Koehncke's "Timecode") a little more disco-house kick in the beginning and a mix-fitting bubbling near the end? Maybe, but here it's justified. KRISTAL HAWKINS
RICHARD PRYOR
Evolution/Revolution
(Rhino)
Alternate title: Negro/Black, to denote the split in terminology between the 1966–68 first disc and the 1971–74 second. Not that the differences are always clear-cut: There's some uncharacteristic diffidence in '66, and his '60s delivery as a whole is laid back compared with the later work. But even then, Pryor's working out ideas and bits that would appear as late as 1975's Is It Something I Said?—his preacher character is already boasting of having "met God in 1929" while eating a sandwich on the street. (A conversation between "Heart & Brain" somewhat eerily evokes the true heart-attack story a decade later in his first concert film.) The mask of friendly professionalism slips on "Jail," an arrest story whose embittered passion is all over his voice; he also presages N.W.A's complaints about black authority figures a little too eager to please their white colleagues. By '71, the long pieces with multiple voices have been tightened and sped up, and by the end of disc two he's no longer shy about acknowledging his whorehouse childhood. There's even a little music, with Pryor's mouth doing a good Tony Williams impression to set a scene. Most of this will be familiar to owners of the myriad releases Laff and other labels hawked into the '80s, and from the Wattstax soundtrack. This authorized set with corrected edits, however, is a valuable improvement, and even more so in light of the multiple sclerosis that has rendered Pryor mute. RICKEY WRIGHT
