**1/2 Ginuwine

100% GINUWINE

(550 Music/Epic)

For anyone who can't tell what Ginuwine's all about from his lascivious grin and the Billy Dee Williams 'stache that frames it, a primer: his name's Ginuwine and he's the ladies' choice. He gets up in 'em like a rented Rolls Royce. Or that's what his second album, 100% Ginuwine, leads us to believe -- an admitted "sexaholic," Ginuwine comes off like the king of the speed-dial booty call, a guy who begs, pleads, cries, and moans in every song because he knows the ladies dig that histrionic soul-man stuff. He's a B-team R. Kelly, singing sweet-naughty nothin' with one foot already out the bedroom window, and his finest moment on 100% is a cover of Michael Jackson's "She's Out of My Life," so note-perfect it could fool Bubbles.

So thank God for producer Timbaland -- he masterminded Ginuwine's 1996 hit "Pony" (a grinding groove that's become many a stripper's ace in the hole), and he turns 100% into a sweaty 16-track honeymoon suite. This is slow-jam Timbo, of course, functioning less like the cyber-funk beat wizard of Aaliyah's look-ma-no-cymbals smash "Are You That Somebody" and more like the guy who tailors Barry White's smoking jackets; and his late-night R&B can be as snoozy as anybody's. But when "Do You Remember" and "Final Warning" come alive -- with rhythmically bipolar drum programs homina-homina-ing and Timbaland speaker-phoning murmuring-playa asides and Jumbotron bass lines rollin' like thunder under the covers -- it almost doesn't matter how slack whatshisname's game is.

-- Alex Pappademas