Jon Caramanica

The change was obvious as Joan Osborne stepped to the stage for her rendition of “Little Red Corvette.” Decked out in a floor-length crimson gown, a feather boa and heavy makeup, she purred her way through the song with echoes of Ma Rainey and Mae West, yet failed to even capture the energy of her musical accompaniment. Former Living Colour guitarist Vernon Reid and Leonard Hubbard (bass) carried the tune powerfully, but their handiwork was only tapestry compared to the thunderous drumwork of Ahmir “?uestlove” Thompson, percussionist extraordinaire of the Roots. His drums were miked to top volume and each crack of the snare seemed to displace Osborne just one notch more. Thompson did the same thing to singer Pierre Andre on “Let’s Pretend We’re Married,” but this time with the bass drum, pounding holes in Andre’s far-too-literal interpretation of the song.

Though Thompson shined throughout, certain performers (each of the tracks featured a guest vocalist) rose to the material. Angelique Kidjo, Benin’s Afropop diva, cavorted her way through “D.M.S.R.,” though she couldn’t quite achieve the Artist’s vocal perfection. The same could be said of former Living Colour frontman Corey Glover, who took his stab at the sensual “Lady Cab Driver” and then scaled to the balcony, ran around the theater and eventually, five minutes later, returned to the stage, having exhorted the crowd to antiphonal chant all the while.

But Glover, despite his energy, missed the point. Sure, it feels good to cheer, but Prince hurt good, an aesthetic picked up on only by the vocalists on the album’s final two tracks. Carl Hancock Rux brought his characteristic disaffected intellectual charm to bear on “All the Critics Love U in New York,” while newcomer Bilal Oliver, a Roots crew protigi, nailed the erotic head of “International Lover.” Tempering his natural Marvin Gaye style with a splash of Jodeci-worthy histrionics (grinding on the floor, etc.), Bilal captured Prince’s ecstatic spirit more capably than his twice-as-old peers. After he snuck offstage, there was visible relief among the crowd; if smoking were permitted, a cloud of nicotine fumes would have no doubt filled the air.

Of course, great sex is never complete without afterglow, and that’s just what politically conscious folk singer Toshi Reagon, with her slimmed down reprise of “1999,” managed to provide. Reagon’s voice is an explosive gift. It was the unexpected, perfect complement to Bilal’s aggrandizing carnality, and just the voice to cut through Prince’s purple haze and reveal the liberation of a new power generation.

Think of it as an Amnesty International movement for prisoners of politics, as opposed to political prisoners.

Fleming was inspired in part by a song and video that had just begun to grab attention, John Michael Montgomery’s “Letters From Home.” The song is No. 2 on the Billboard country music singles chart right now, and in heavy rotation on the two country music video stations, CMT and GAC. The lyrics document three letters to a soldier penned by people he’s left behind: first, his warm-hearted mother, then his lonely girlfriend and, finally, his stoic father. The accompanying video culminates in what has emerged as a country music video money shot: the melancholy soldier.

Though a bit treacly, the song has a few adept songwriting flourishes — “They all laugh like there’s something funny ’bout the way I talk/ When I say, ‘Mama sends her best y’all.’” In the video — filmed at the Army Aviation Support Facility No. 1 in Smyrna, Tenn., and featuring National Guard soldiers as the supporting cast — a baby-faced serviceman (played by an actor, Fred Mullins) pores over the words from home, sharing them (and Mama’s cookies) with his bunker mates. Camaraderie is the order of the day — being deployed almost seems like light work. But by the time he gets to the letter from his square-jawed father — “Your stubborn ol’ daddy ain’t said too much,” his mother groans in the first one — he’s reduced to tears. For a moment, it seems as if the video might turn transgressive — the revelry comes to a stop, and the realities of war begin to reveal themselves: distance, confusion, fear. The protagonist’s unit mates leave him alone with his sadness, because, as the song says, “ain’t nothing funny when a soldier cries.”

But when the chorus kicks in — “I fold it up and put in my shirt/ Pick up my gun and get back to work” — the soldier does just that, his pride swelling along with the impending engagement with the enemy. By video’s end, emotional dissent has been quashed as he gets in the back seat of a sand-colored Jeep, shoves the letter inside his uniform and prepares a steely gaze to guard against what’s to come.

On Fleming’s Web site, next to the shots of her handing letters to actual soldiers, is a shot that shows her grinning side by side with Mullins, the actor. In this case, the virtual soldier is just as important as the real thing.

If images have been the undoing of the conceit that was meant to be the Iraq liberation project — photos of flag-draped caskets, digital snaps of the humiliations of imprisoned Iraqis, grainy videotapes of a gung-ho American’s beheading — then it’s not surprising that softer representations of the wartime soldier are being promulgated in other arenas. A spate of videos in current rotation on country music television are perhaps the most vivid of these public, fictive images. These used to be called propaganda; now, they’re just part of pop culture.

Country music’s jingoistic tendencies are well-documented. (Witness, for example, the “Patriotic Country” compilation — and then try to imagine a “Patriotic Rap” or “Patriotic Emo” companion set.) Unsurprisingly, it’s become the most active arena in the attempted restoration of the military’s public image. These days the teary-eyed soldier is everywhere on CMT, seen in 75 million homes, just shy of MTV’s 88 million. The message is clear: He’s humane, he’s human, and he’s fighting for the cause of right (or, more accurately, the right). These fictionalized accounts offer all the perks of embedding without the messiness of actual combat. And what they quite calculatedly show are not the tragedies of war — the fighting, the bloodshed, any actual engagement with an enemy — but rather the less contentious moments that round out a soldier’s experience.

In the video for Dolly Parton’s limber bluegrass number “Welcome Home,” the troops are either mute connoisseurs of culture — sitting attentively as they watch Dolly croon — or jumbles of male frailty. The opening scene is of a sailor returning from deployment, spotting his father waving on shore and, after stiffening his upper lip for a final salute, descending the gangplank to give dad a puffy-eyed embrace. (Dolly herself is, natch, a model of patriotism, appearing first in a shimmering stars-and-stripes pantsuit and, later, in a camouflage one.)

Similarly, the combatants of Gary Allan’s “Tough Little Boys” are lauded for their hearts, not their missions. The song itself is a wonder, a meditation on how fatherhood, especially being the father of a young girl, erodes and rewrites traditional notions of masculinity. But for all the delicately rendered sentiment in the text, the video has simpler aims. Like Montgomery’s video, it features members of the National Guard based in Smyrna, Tenn., including some who have returned from tours in the Middle East. Allan himself sports an Army T-shirt and sings in a tent in front of projected images of soldiers muscling through sandy terrain. Most of the video, though, is devoted to the men and their daughters. Set at opposite sides of a field, the fathers, in full fatigues, beam proudly as they hold out snapshots of their young girls. Across the way, the girls clutch pictures of their dads. About three-fourths of the way through the video, the two groups are unleashed on each other, resulting in half-toothy grins for the kids and impossibly grand hugs from their dads. In reducing these burly men of combat to blushing, tearful, tender fathers, the implicit question of the video — which dates to last year, but still enjoys rotation on country music television, presumably because of its patriotic fervor — is: How could these men possibly do harm?

“American Soldier,” the inescapable Toby Keith number from last year, covers the same territory even more blatantly. In Keith’s mind, the country music world’s take on the soldier should be no different from its approach to any other working man (or woman, one would hope, though female soldiers are hardly represented in these songs and videos, if at all). “Our soldiers take a lot of the blame when we have to go in and our government’s wrong or right or whatever,” Keith told CMT last year of his revisionist project. “They’re just working people like me and you. They get up, put their boots on, and then they’re told, ‘Hey, here’s your orders. You’ve got to go here.’ They’re just doing their job. They’re not in there killing to be killing. They’d rather be back with their families, too.”

And that’s certainly the impression the “American Soldier” video hopes to leave. At the outset, the sun rises over Anyburb, U.S.A., as the titular working man goes through his daily routine — wake up, nuzzle wife, cook the family breakfast, etc. The mundane quickly evaporates, though, when the morning commute ends at the local military base (the video was shot at Miramar AFB, in San Diego) and daddy suits up for his ride on a transport plane, headed to parts unknown. As the plane takes off, his young son gives a half-hearted JFK Jr. salute. On board, though, the soldier is a tight knot of emotion, sadness mixed with pride. These sentiments can coexist, the video says, but it’s better for America when the latter trumps the former.

Though it’s months old, the “American Soldier” video remains a staple of country music television and radio. Late last month, the self-styled outlaw Keith took home four Academy of Country Music awards, including, for the second year running, entertainer of the year. For years, Keith had complained vociferously about the establishment’s rejection of him come awards time, but since he’s made political rabble-rousing his stock in trade, he’s become the genre’s favored son. (He’d also recently played a show at CentCom in front of a crowd that included President Bush.) Even CMT’s slightly hipper ceremony, the Flame-Worthy awards, rolled with the Keith bandwagon, awarding him video of the year honors for the “American Soldier” clip. Apparently, what’s good for America is good for Keith as well. Or maybe it’s the other way around.

This is one of those times. Meet Beanie Sigel, Next Big Thing.

The Philly rapper first appeared on record with hip-hop progressives and fellow City of Brotherly Love natives, the Roots, on a song called “Adrenaline.” Up against Roots’ MC Black Thought’s organic intellectualism, Beanie came off as the hardened thug, savvy about the street corners and quick to react, not think, when the situation called for it. His aesthetic didn’t exactly mesh with the Roots, but Jay-Z heard the future in Beanie’s words and flow, and quickly signed him to a deal — even though Beanie had no formal music industry experience, no demo and no finished songs, only a loose collection of mix-tape drops and radio freestyles.

“The Truth,” his first record, has been highly anticipated over the past year. Hip-hop magazines have endlessly hyped the arrival with teasers, profiles and advance reviews. Blaze put him on the cover under the cautionary pull quote, “Ain’t nothing on my album hearsay.” The Source ran an extensive article that overlooked his real name, but included the markings of a major profile like quotes from his mother and recent rumors that his crew had beat down a bootlegger. They also give him the lead review and 4.5 mikes (stars) out of five, a score usually reserved for superstars. Even Rolling Stone got in on the act, also giving Beanie the lead review with an uncharacteristically high (for rap) four out of five stars. It’s fulsome praise for a rapper without a major commercial single and whose only regular MTV or radio appearance has come as the lead rapper on Jay-Z’s last single. Times is hard.

It’s not that Beanie doesn’t deserve the accolades. He’s a gifted rhymer with a brusque, well-timed flow. His talents are certainly evident on “The Truth.” On the first radio single, “Mac Man,” Beanie likens the music business to a series of video games. The rhymes flow over the wakka-wakka effect from the original Pac-Man arcade game (“I cop power pellets and y’all call them bricks” and so on). On “Mac and Brad,” Beanie tests one of the genre’s finest storytellers, Scarface of the Geto Boys — and makes his partner mold to his style.

On “What Your Life Like,” Beanie drops one of the more potent prison reminiscences in recent memory — “You gotta wash out your drawers same water you shit/You gotta brush, gargle and spit the same water you pissed” — while on “What a Thug About,” he reworks one of his old mix-tape verses in a jiggy style with a dash of humor: “I want everything, not just some of the shit/Got niggas coming home at night, like, ‘You son of a bitch!’”

But the most crucial aspect of Beanie’s appeal is his flow and his careful rhyme structure. Sounds match at the end of lines as often as in the middle, creating entire sentences and verses that play off similar cadence schemes. Rather than detract from creativity, the redundancy (often, words are repeated within a verse to maintain a theme) adds impact to his delivery. Witness the following verse from “Playa” (and mothers, hide your kids):

“When I step in the club, bitches know my name
I don’t do a lot of talking, bitches know my game
I don’t gotta buy a lot of drinks, bitches know my aim
[They] lift up skirts, take off shirts
Find babysitters, take off work
Lose their jobs, panties, shoes and bras
Niggas mad at us cause they lose their wives”

It’s not sensitive stuff exactly, but it’s delivered with uncanny timing and wit. With almost a dozen different producers behind him, he’s forced to stretch his style in a variety of directions, almost uniformly successfully. It’s those qualities that have endeared him to listeners, even though his corpus is narrow. All great rappers share those qualities, and Beanie’s twist is fresh and modern — hence the Pavlovian media response.

Nevertheless, Beanie’s style is an ephemeral thing, particular to this time in hip-hop and therefore dependent on the fickle nature of radio and the pop moment. The real question is whether he can evolve, or use his skills to create a grander personality, one that matches the current buzz. Otherwise, the burden of expectation will force him out of the narrow spotlight, and out with a legion of rap coulda-beens. And that, folks, is the real truth.

Naturally, it was the big beaters who flocked immediately to the duo, seeing “I’ll House You” as a blueprint for their entire genre of thick, pulsing beats and impact-free A-B-A-B rhymes. As the Jungle Brothers have aged, their self-aware, occasionally mystical rhymes have given way to the inane party banter that complements dance music so well. After Alex Gifford, frontman of the British big beat outfit the Propellerheads, invited the pair to guest on his U.S. debut, they agreed to collaborate on the Jungle Brothers’ next project, “V.I.P.” (“Very Impotent Production?”).

Gifford’s production is not entirely limited to the electronic music tropes. Nevertheless, his forays into other areas — straight-ahead hip-hop, acid jazz pretensions, funky house — are no more successful than his big beats. His skills as a party mover, perhaps his only shake-your-asset as a Propellerhead, are barely visible here. Only “Strictly Dedicated,” an organic hip-hop track reminiscent of numbers by old-school revisionists Jurassic 5, coheres into a compelling form. The remainder of the album is composed of a milange of styles, not one of which does justice to the Jungle Brothers’ legacy. The title track bears all the markings of the funk-soul-brother post-Fratboy Slim aesthetic, while “Early Morning” repeats clichid phrases to mind-numbing effect. “Sexy Body” bites Miami bass, though with none of the lascivious edge; “Playing for Keeps” is a blues track, I think, though its musical and lyrical construction is laughably shambolic; and finally, “Freakin’ You” incorporates surf-rock cadences into its evil musical plan, creating a gumbo no amount of talent could spice.

Most disturbing, the pallor of the dead lingers all over “V.I.P.” Not dead like Tupac and Biggie but, rather, the end of an era and a style, and of the individuals who were first responsible for those innovations. Despite all the fanfare, hip-hop fans no longer consider the JBs relevant. “V.I.P.” has been generally ignored by the hip-hop press, meriting only a middling review in the “alternatives” section of the Source. Meanwhile, the dance press salivates, as it has always preferred its hip-hop off the streets and in headphones. Blithely ignorant, the Jungle Brothers truck onward, exchanging their standard-bearer status for overseas success and local obscurity. Yea, the mighty have fallen, but they remain on the (dance) floor willingly.

Of course, anonymity is antithetical to fame, and soon enough the mask came off. By the time of his first solo album, Ghost’s face was upfront — as were his heartaches. “Ironman” (1996) was an astounding document of syllabic dexterity and personal revelation. Amid the above-standard braggadocio and Mafioso apocrypha were fragments of a tormented soul: a paean to his mother, a vicious skewering of an unfaithful ex. These were more profound than typical thug tears; the language captured an emotional complexity uncommon in hip-hop and rendered his heart in full color.

There are snatches of that pulse on “Supreme Clientele,” Ghost’s second LP. On “Child’s Play,” he reminisces about a teenage love, managing to combine innocence with an upstart hard-rock sensibility. One minute it’s “She had a … waist like a Coke bottle’s scoring … Mole like Marilyn Monroe/Threw a rose in her mouth.” By the end, though, it’s good morning, heartache: “Got jealous when she kissed Rob/I broke her chico sticks.” What’s new?

When Ghost roams, his gift appears in the proper light. Check the flashback: “Those were the days, made faces in school plays/Paper trays, citywide test made half-a-days/Shooting puppy water, might hump the pillow, dick a inch taller.” In three lines, from the lunchroom to the bedroom, he encapsulates the expectation of youth and the way it devolves into adult contradiction. Ghost gives those shattered dreams even more play on “Wu Banga 101,” where he spins a liturgical drama, weaving seemingly pithy details into a compelling narrative:

Slapped the pastor, didn’t know Pop had asthma
He pulled out his blue bible, change fell out his coat
Three condoms, two dice, one bag of dope
Oooh! Rev. ain’t right, his church ain’t right
Deacon is a pimp, tell by his eyes …
Two ushers slipped 80 dollars right out the pot.

Unfortunately, Ghost uses his skills for evil more than good, but that’s not a sin. His criminology lectures are among the most compelling in the game, ribald with a delivery and language that lend them an aura of almost extrahuman possibility. On “Ghost Deini” he effectively cops to sticking up two rival rappers. (The story is likely a swipe at rapper 50 Cent, whose “How to Rob an Industry Nigga” was the subject of much consternation in the hip-hop world last summer.)

Then, when he drops the crime, his tales can turn seemingly nonsensical. As he did on earlier projects, Ghost displays his unusual lyrical relationship with food, lacing “One” with a classic gastronomic non sequitur:

Rhymes is made of garlic, never in the target
When the narcs hit, rumor is you might start to spit …
Dug behind monument cakes, we never half-baked Alaskan, cess-capade, pushing new court dates.

Though superficially odd, Ghost’s worldview certainly sounds luxurious and entrancing. On “Stay True,” he describes “orals like Smokey’s voice, little moist, but choice/We guzzle Dom, smoke the scratchy throats/Live on the edge, bracelets, shades and classy coats.” Even when embracing the visceral over the intellectual, his proclamations perk. After preparing to “season the broth” of some select enemies, Ghost bursts forth: “Bung, bung, bung! Your bell got rung, rung, rung!” It’s not celebration so much as excitement. Underneath all the decorous language and dark, masked imagery resides a man still capable of joy, even if it’s only to celebrate another’s downfall.

On the whole though, moments like that are as scarce as Will Smith on urban radio. Instead, the telecast inevitably degenerates into a record-label-sponsored match of My Diva Is Bigger Than Your Diva. And yes, that goes for the boys too — how else do you describe Sting and his tantric career longevity or (p)opera heartthrob Andrea Bocelli? Like the gladiator matches of Rome, these square-offs aren’t so much about who wins as the game itself — it’s all bread and circuses.

And easily sated they are, these frothing fans with tears in their eyes. First there’s the, ahem, Soccer Moms — women in their 20s and 30s who don’t spend a lot of time consuming pop music, but when they do, they do so largely by group consensus. These are people who buy Vonda Shepard records not just because they relate to Ally McBeal, but because Shepard, with her bossy alto, speaks to them, polishing up the pain of approaching middle age with a neat drop of blue-eyed soul. You can track their purchasing habits on the Amazon.com bestseller list, which features Adult Contemporary (that’s what the folks at Billboard call it) artists who are generally shunned by radio yet still, largely via word of mouth, manage a steady buzz — Aimee Mann, Tracy Chapman, Bocelli, Shepard, etc. It’s practically the Oprah Club for music — white, softy-liberal, female suburbanites sifting through their angst with song. (Oprah, please don’t get any ideas.)

Second, and at fierce odds with the previous group, come the Shrieking Teenage Girls. They abhor their moms’ music for being, well, booorrrinnnnggg. They’d much rather see synchronized boys in tight jeans or bop along with non-threatening girl-stars next door. For them, music is like a Happy Meal — each purchase brings a new toy into their world. The artists this group favors plead earnestness as well, just a far younger, less cynical version of it. Yes, the Backstreeters want it that way, and yes, Christina Aguilera knows what a girl wants. It’s all part of the truth of youth, divine in its naiveti.

On this year’s telecast, both of these contingents will be well catered to — Whitney Houston, Santana and Faith Hill for the older set; Martin, Kid Rock and Britney Spears for the young ‘ns. There’s even Chucho Valdes and Ibrahim Ferrer for those who think the next Latin craze will need a walking stick.

But the nominees — there’s the real rub. Well-appointed in their custom outfits and sporting on-loan jewelry, they’ll sit attentively in their seats waiting for their category, then either exult joyously to the podium or grin and swallow the insult. Sure, winning the statuette is an honor, but to a multimillion-selling act like the Backstreet Boys, it would be nothing compared to the opportunity to get irresponsible with their fans for just one night.

See, if you thought it was about the music or about the respect of the recording community, you’d be wrong. How else does one explain the nomination of Lou Bega, a third-rate Vin Diesel knockoff with a paunch, a scratchy voice and a song almost entirely lifted from mambo king Perez Prado? Running down a list of women you’ve dated over a stolen beat merits a Grammy nomination? OK, then those guys who shouted out all the women they’d slept with in their ad at the back of my high school yearbook better be up for a Pulitzer this year.

Bega’s egregious nomination is not the only one — what about Cher, who mailed it in for her 100-percent synthesized hit “Believe”? And what of this Bocelli character? For all I know, he sings in radio ads for pasta companies in Italy.

“Grammy Nominees 2000,” a collection just released on CD, brings together most of the nominees in three popular categories — record of the year, best new artist and best male pop vocal performance. It’s a testament to the Academy’s startling lack of originality. Bega, Bocelli and Cher are there, as are Martin, Spears and Aguilera. Kid Rock and TLC are there for the teenage “wish I was a rebel but I’ve got it too good” types, while their parents can hum along to Santana, Sting and Macy Gray.

See, the Grammy folks have so thoroughly sorted through the demographics of their target groups that the Grammy album and the nomination process at large miss almost any element of surprise. These nominees merely re-create the charts we’ve been bombarded with all year — Billboard, Amazon.com, MTV’s Total Request Live, radio Top 10s. Watching the festivities will only reinforce the machines that got these artists to their perches in the first place.

The only voice of dissent on the Grammy collection is left-field best new artist nominee Susan Tedeschi. A blues-folk singer from Boston, her song “It Hurt So Bad” is a fresh, sparkling ode to raw anguish with debts to early blues singers as well as pure ’50s rock ‘n’ roll. On an album brimming with insipid, overproduced schlock, her guitar twangs and crystal voice are a welcome reprieve. Sure she won’t win, but it’s nice to have this moment with her before her dissent is fully commodified and she ends up doing a guest spot as a stand-in for Shepard on “Ally.”