Soul-refresher course

Reviewed by RUSSELL BAILLIE

Alicia Keys: The Diary Of Alicia Keys

Herald rating: * * *

(J Records/ BMG)

Missy Elliott: This is not a Test!

Herald rating: * * *

(Elektra)

Nelly Furtado: Folklore

Herald rating: * *

(Dreamworks)

These three women all operate somewhere between the pop mainstream and hip-hop's parallel lane.

They have previously proved to be class acts - video-powered pop stars, but with past proof that they are musically-creative talents in a Britneyworld.

On their previous albums - Keys and Furtado are on their second, Elliott, who seems to churn 'em out at one a year, is on her fifth - they've displayed substance while establishing their own style.

In the case of Keys that style owes a lot to the first ladies of soul, even more so on her sophomore effort.

That's acknowledged a few songs in with a wobbly-bottomed cover of Gladys Knight and the Pips' If I Was Your Woman, which comes sprinkled with a sample of the Isaac Hayes' version of Walk On By.

But being the deft ivory-tickler she is, it all starts with a piano flourish as an intro to opening track Harlem's Nocturne. Then it's off into her soul-styled songs which evoke everybody from a young Aretha Franklin to a young Whitney Houston to much of Motown's early 70s roster - Heartburn (produced by Elliott's studio offside Timbaland) sounds like it was modelled on Papa Was a Rolling Stone. And You Don't Know My Name could well have been a Marvin Gaye track in a former life. Though that's before it goes into an extended talking bit in which she plays a diner waitress cold-calling some customer who has caught her eye ("I look different outside my work clothes ... ").

She's sings and plays with enough elegance to make this something of a soul-refresher course. But song-wise, Diary ... is no album of any great insight and little reaches the spots touched by the best songs off her debut.

It's as if Keys knows what a grown-up love song should say, but she can't quite convince us that it's her saying it.

Missy Elliott remains the funniest, funkiest, freakiest and freshest woman in hip-hop. If This is Not A Test! doesn't top its predecessor, last year's brilliant, 80s retro-flavoured Under Construction, it still has plenty of ammunition for what one day will be truly fabulous greatest hits.

Among the candidates are the spiky noise-jumble of Pass That Dutch, the reality-check Wake Up (with Jay-Z), the fabulous Prince impression on Dat's What I'm Talkin' About, the DIY advice offer of Toyz, and the celebration of the big-boned with the help of Nelly on Pump It Up.

The ballads have never been her strong suit, and the filler count is a little high towards the end. But the prolific Elliott and her best songs keep exuding rude good hip-hop health.

Nelly Furtado's debut Whoa Nelly was the great pop album of 2001, a kaleidoscopic wonder, a Beck-like collision of R&B, hip-hop, latin, folk and more which introduced the Canadian of Portuguese extraction as a fully-formed talent.

Unfortunately, by comparison, album No 2 seems to take itself far too seriously with songs exuding all sorts of right-on concerns about her own now-famous life, culture and immigration.

And sound-wise, there is enough second-hand ethnic fibre on some songs to get her a Womad gig for life.

Elsewhere Furtado dulls down her musical palette to that of the band-fronting singer-songwriter, rather the hip-hop dabbler of the debut, while too often she's over-reaching with her reedy Cyndi Lauper-like singing voice.

Track one One Trick Pony features the angular serrations of the Kronos Quartet (who she could only sample on the debut); Fresh Off the Boat has a Brazilian-flavoured exuberance, as does the bilingual Forca, while the closing ballad Childhood Dreams suggests Furtado has come down with a case of the Joni Mitchells.

It might be a deeper and more meaningful work than her zesty debut, but that is also its undoing.