***1/2 Cibo Matto

STEREOTYPE A

(Warner Bros.)

Of all the reality-is-just-a-big-video-game scenarios pop culture has served up of late, I'll take Cibo Matto's new single "Sci-Fi Wasabi." Copping a proto-Kool Keith cadence on the mike, singer Miho Hatori impersonates a bike messenger chasing green-mustard power pellets with Volvic water and trying to hook up with Obi-Wan Kenobi at St. Mark's Place before her token runs out. "I got to get the shit straight . . . I got no reset for this game," Miho raps, as if she were so over being the cute Asian chick with the eat-to-the-beat-y'all flow. Because city life in '99 is as full of pain and possibility as ever -- no matter how fast you pedal, you still have to watch those potholes. So Hatori and player/producer Yuka Honda take it easy on the food metaphors that got their 1997 debut Viva! La Woman pigeonholed as novelty trip-hop, digging instead on nervous funk and pensive samba, until they can feel the city breathin'. Honda's beats finally blossom into actual songs, and there's a sexy, daffy illogic in the way they hang together -- Bollywood hooks bounce off Casio 'n' bass beats, somebody switches over to the Slayer station during a Talking Heads funk jam, and Astrud Gilberto does the Cabbage Patch at Studio 54. Behind the funk, there's a confused heart. Miho disses a suitor on "Speechless" because he wants quantity, not quality (and can't she get some reciprocity?). By "Sunday," even her record bag's sending her mixed signals: "Maybe my ear dirt's cheatin' on me, yo."

-- Alex Pappademas