"Put it this way," Chris Rock quipped at 1999's MTV Video Music Awards. "Jennifer Lopez is the Commodores. The ass is Lionel Richie." Rock was playing off the chauvinistic hype that J. Lo's booty is her best, uh, asset, but even still, it's hard to argue that – like bon bon shakers Ricky Martin and George Michael – it didn't help make the unimpressive vocalist an MTV mainstay. In the years since her recording debut, however, Lopez's baby-got-back hubbub has lost its appeal, and (coincidentally or not) so has the luster of her increasingly forgettable tunes. Not that flagging public interest in her rear will end her career: Lopez is suddenly flyin' high again, but now it's Ja Rule – not Ja Rump – giving her Latin-flavored pop and R&B that extra bounce per ounce.

Rule – the Beyoncé to Lopez's Destiny's Child, to update Rock's analogy – has taken center stage in Lo's recent unexceptional singles, reworking the initially poorly received "I'm Real" and "Ain't It Funny" into two nearly identical hit duets and jump-starting sales of 2001's quick-sinking and unstellar J. Lo. Unavailable together elsewhere, those tracks are the obvious selling points to J to tha L-O! The Remixes, which features reworked best-ofs from J. Lo and 1999's On the 6.

And while Rule's remixes alone would've made J to tha L-O! worth purchasing, the album is so deliriously enjoyable that it's not only Lopez's best release yet, it's also the most memorable quick fix of fun in years. By cutting Lo's unbearable ballads and shifting focus from her unremarkable voice to the actual songs, J to tha L-O! – aside from the hi-NRG, lo-RGNality "Waiting for Tonight" and the tacked-on soundtrack banality "Alive" – easily doubles as a wholly worthwhile greatest-hits disc of nonstop pop and Jeep-jumpin' beats. It's only in the hands of Rodney Jerkins, Pablo Flores, P. Diddy, and others, however, that previously good-not-great tracks such as "Let's Get Loud" and "I'm Gonna Be Alright" fully reveal themselves as some of recent memory's most absurdly addictive offerings to all pop fans – not just the booty-obsessed. (Jimmy Draper)

Mary Lou Lord
Live City Sounds (Rubric)

If you were there to hear those first blasts of Mary Lou Lord's unmitigated passion out of Olympia, Wash., it may have seemed like her imminent destiny was to be ordained the queen of the indie scene, if not the inspiration for a full-fledged movement. However, when the grrrls white riot whipped up to a gale storming the walls of the boy's castle, there didn't seem to be any need for some acoustic troubadour. And when the Lilith years rolled around and half-wits like Meredith Brooks were cashing in – despite phony pretense – Lord watched much of it from the sidelines. A pregnancy led her to cancel a national tour in support of her major-label debut. And as the decade closed, she had two excellent but mostly forgotten albums and was still best known for stirring the ire of Courtney after a fling with Kurt.

Live City Sounds finds her reaching back to her roots in the most literal sense; as a busker working Harvard Square and the Park Street T stop in Boston. Armed with only her acoustic guitar and a portable DAT recorder, Lord makes the type of disc she should have made in the first place: a stripped-down, sincere folk album. Eschewing her own compositions (save for "His Latest Flame," copenned with Nick Salomen) in favor of interpreting the work of a relatively diverse field of artists, Lord delivers a platter that can't be heard as anything less than inspiring. Every song has something special (Richard Thompson's "1952 Vincent Black Lightning"; Sandy Denny's "By the Time It Gets Dark"; Big Star's "Thirteen"; and Daniel Johnson's "Speeding Motorcycle" all get shiny new skins). But it's her rendition of Springsteen's "Thunder Road" that's a mind blower, especially for puds like me who never got the guy's early stuff.

Lord's disc is anchored in folk tradition, in which songs were heard and absorbed and passed along to the next person. City Sounds is one woman's vision of delivering tomorrow's standards today – it's great stuff. (John O'Neill)

Various artists
Departures: Global Expeditions in Nu Jazz and Broken Beats (Om)

Once a sound or style gets discovered, it's tempting to move on, step on up to the next big thing. When I got Om Records' new collection, Departures: Global Expeditions in Nu Jazz and Broken Beats, the subtitle made me cringe a little, even though those monikers get slapped on some of my favorite music. I mean, broken beat is so 2001, right? But a shitload of good music came out last year, and Departures steps up to the plate for '02.

While the album features work by some well-known names, like Jazzanova (the uncharacteristically forgettable "Coffee Talk") and Tosca (whose rolling "Honey" gets an excellent rerub by the Funky Lowlives), the collection stands out by virtue of music from lower-profile artists such as the Joakim Lone Octect, Maddslinky, and Phoojun. As Phoojun, Phil Asher and Nathan Haines whip up a tasty confection of shuffling snares, stand-up bass, and vocal snippets (including a teasing sample from Opaque's remix of "The Crossing" by P'taah), only to break it down into loping, half-tempo sections. Dano also takes liberties with the beat on his sparse, spacey "Melancholy Dub" of Rocket's "EZ Rider," a cut that shows why labels like NRK, Junior, and Defected are always eager for a remix from this S.F.-based producer. Om's own are represented with a stripped-down cut from aFRO-mYSTIC, whose album is due to drop later this spring. As anyone who has seen their live show can attest, aFRO-mYSTIC are one of the very few nu jazz acts that translate well to the stage, and it will be fascinating to see what drummer Simone White does with the start-stop drum loop that underpins the instrumental version of "The Odyssey."