*** Angelique Kidjo

OREMI

(Island)

African singer Angelique Kidjo has left behind arguments about roots versus international pop: she may think of herself as a bridge between the two, but she's pretty much crossed the bridge, becoming an international R&B artist who happens to sing in African languages. When she includes African elements -- the background chant on her sly reworking of Hendrix's "Voodoo Child," or the Zulu-like chorus at the end of a funk number called "Babalao" -- they sound like borrowed spice in a familiar stew.

For a lesser artist, this would amount to a sellout, but Kidjo proves good enough to pull it off. Whether she's trading choruses with Cassandra Wilson or Kelly Price or mixing it up with Branford Marsalis on the Weather Report-esque funk of "Itche Koutche," she meets her collaborators on equal ground. Even at its loungiest, the music here has authenticity and grit. And even in the most calculating moments, Kidjo's personality shines through. If she hasn't yet alienated Afropop diehards, Oremi should do the trick. But for the mainstream audience who've dismissed African singers as too exotic, scary, or amateurish in their appropriations of Western pop, Kidjo has emerged as a real contender, perhaps the first.

-- Banning Eyre