Not even Dionne Warwick and her mind-reading friends could have predicted that, over the course of two CDs, Destiny's Child would become one of the most successful girl groups on the planet. But successful this Houston trio is, and their sophomore CD shows why. Yes, the lineup changes as often as lead singer Beyoncé's hairstyle, but fun, disposable pop/R&B needn't be rooted in permanence, and DC is mad fun and mad catchy to boot. With the assistance of hitmakers Shek'spere and Kandi Burruss, Destiny's Child trade in effervescent, hip-shaking, finger-wagging, 'you-go-girl, kick-him-to-the-curb' anthems. The Writing's on the Wall is loaded with tracks like "Bills, Bills, Bills," which are suitable both for dancing and as topics on the Ricki Lake Show. The percolating "Bug A Boo" is irresistible, as is the sassy "So Good." To their credit, the girls can slow the pace down, and on the sultry "Temptation" they get to work their considerable chops to nice effect. But as sales and chart figures have shown, Destiny's Child are at their best when they are laying down the law to some trifling man, and/or working their own groove thang. Work it they do on this somewhat formulaic but ultimately irresistible effort. --Amy Linden

However coy she might be in her public statements, Britney Spears leans more than a bit toward the provocative on In the Zone. Less concerned with aiming at the mainstream radio dial than in the first days of her career, she and her collaborators make this as street and club ready a record as possible. The opening duet with Madonna, "Me Against the Music," is worthy, but the bigger superstar’s presence serves almost less as a performance than a key to Britney’s intentions: as Madonna did on albums such as Erotica , Ray of Light, and Music, she’s out to bend current trends to her needs. R. Kelly, Moby, and Ying Yang Twins all provide stirring moments that draw on everything from Bollywood to Southern hip-hop, while one of the most impressive tracks, "Touch of My Hand," joins the proud tradition of Cyndi Lauper’s "She Bop." She still lacks a fully formed artistic vision of her own, but Zone, with its many get-free anthems, puts her much closer. --Rickey Wright

In the six years since her debut CD ...Baby One More Time set Billboard charts a-trembling, Britney Spears has pried open pop music's rusty cage and sprinkled her sex-kittenish fairy dust around like long-overdue disinfectant. She has also arguably done more for the neglected navel than Jennifer Lopez and Beyoncé have done for the derrière. But despite her well-earned reputation for boldness (to which releasing a greatest-hits package after just four discs can only add), Britney calls it quits at making claims about her vocal talent. And that works in her favor. Because while My Prerogative is an exciting and even at times superb record, its merits lie almost exclusively in each track's production. From the Abba-esque choruses of her earliest hits ("...Baby One More Time," "Crazy") to the twitching, pulsed-up grooves of 2001's "I'm a Slave 4 U" to the technified bleeps and swizzles of 2003's self-skewering "Outrageous," the pop princess proves she's been largely content to let her in-studio performances take a back seat to the rhythm. With beats as consistently good as the ones she's managed to recruit, though, it's hard to blame her. "Toxic" and "Me Against the Music" mash trance and hip-hop into the mix, and the three previously unreleased joints don't shrink from sliding headfirst into new sound, either. The Bobby Brown cover and title track stomps and bomps to a bared-teeth backdrop, and "Do Somethin'" creates such dancefloor urgency it should come with a siren. "I've Just Begun (Having My Fun)" treads two steps shy of crossing the Britney-bred boundary between sexy and raunchy, but fans will hope it's autobiographical anyway. For detractors the song--and the disc as a whole--should signal a long wait till the party's over. --Tammy La Gorce

No Description Available
No Track Information Available
Media Type: CD
Artist: JETS
Title: BEST OF JETS-MILLENNIUM COLLEC
Street Release Date: 10/09/2001
Domestic
Genre: SOUL/R & B