Rihanna gets payback; the Cos does rap, & more

A headline-making R&B diva, big-concept rock projects, hipster jazz popsters and a family-friendly hip-hop disc masterminded by Bill Cosby top our new album releases this week.

LARGE AND IN CHARGE: When you've got lemons, you make lemonade. And when you've been beaten up by your celebrity boyfriend (Chris Brown), you press charges, visit TV talk shows and summon up an album themed on staying tough and on top of your game. That's what R&B/pop chanteuse Rihanna has now done with her "Rated R" (Def Jam, B+), a payback sure to get attention from her growing constituency. While songs like "Stupid in Love" don't directly confront that incident, it's easy to read between the lines.

This Barbados-born singer has the voice (and beauty) to back up the ego-tripping and has collaborated with smart writers and arrangers who shape her modern, mainstream sound for broad appeal. "Photographs," featuring will.i.am, hits home especially well with its romantic reverie for things past and eerie, synthesizer-scored arrangement, while "Cold Case Love" (featuring the Justin Timberlake writing touch) builds drama with a D.O.A. love theme and soaring strings.

PHILLY CONNECTIONS: What do you call a hip-hop album that decries social injustices without using foul language, that exposes the immorality of drug dealing, bemoans young girls who dress like pole dancers, castigates dads who've allowed themselves to be imprisoned, and suggests (in "Where Did I Go Wrong") that, among other things, studying harder for the SATs would have been a good idea?

You call that an album no major label would put out, one that sat idle for two years before finally coming out as an "indie" release, doubtless financed by its song conceptualizer, one Dr. William H. Cosby. Funny thing is, "Bill Cosby Presents The Cosnarati - State of Emergency" (B) is sonically on the money, with the right beats and shout outs (by his much younger performing and writing collaborators) to meet a critical rap fan's approval. Hear or buy selections at www.billcosby. com and www.amazon.com.

Another locally rooted guy with his heart in the right place, Jon Bon Jovi, and his bandmates in Bon Jovi debuted at No. 1 last week with "The Circle" (Island, B), proving that sometimes nice guys do finish first.

Much of this conscious, heartland rock outing evokes the spirits of John Mellencamp, Bruce Springsteen and U2, though Bon Jovi's plain-speak variations are a mite bland. But there's no arguing that the stuff works well with their huge international fan base.

JAZZMATAZZ: Two friends and onetime lovers from the Boho-beatnik jazz-blues fringe - Tom Waits and Rickie Lee Jones - have new albums covering lots of their sonic bases. Waits' double concert CD, "Glitter & Doom Live" (Anti, B), finds him in even rawer (think: fork in the garbage disposal) voice as he shares wry, bleak tales scored with funky jazz, waltzy piano, howling expressionist rock and circus-sideshow music. The second, short disc of comedic one-liners, likewise plucked from a recent international tour, is even more amusing.

Been turned off by the heavily politicized and biblical directions Jones has taken in recent albums? The mixed bag of "Balm in Gilead" (Fantasy, A-) is a return to the Jones we used to love, intended to lift us from our current doldrums.

Kindred spirit Ben Sidran, likewise of the finger-popping hipster persuasion, applies more spoken-than-sung rasp and jazz keyboards on "Dylan Different" (Nardis, B) to decent effect. It proves the point that Bob Dylan's surrealistic word play on "Ballad of a Thin Man" and "Subterranean Homesick Blues" really owes more to "beat" traditions than to rock 'n' roll.

ROCK AND A GOOD PLACE: Lie on the floor, place your head between the speakers and let the new super group Them Crooked Vultures (DGC, B+) take you away for a heavy-duty, magical mystery trip, man.

I've barely got a clue what they're singing about. And that just adds to the lost-in-space aura of stoner-blues rock jams created by old-school emulators Josh Homme (guitars/vocals) and David Grohl (drums/backing vocals) and the classic rock icon they've connected with here, bassist/keyboardist/backing vocalist John Paul Jones (Led Zeppelin).

Before he tangled with Kansas and Deep Purple, prog-rock guitar whiz Steve Morse won hearts with the (Dixie) Dregs, a florid instrumental group fusing jazz, bluegrass, rock and classical impulses. Happily, he's now up to all that again with his eponymous band on "Out Standing in Their Field" (Eagle Records, B+).

Ground control to Major Tom. David Bowie is still sounding wondrously weird on the new, 40th anniversary edition of "Space Oddity" (Virgin, A). The icing is a second disc of demos, alternate takes and live radio performances.

LATIN SPICE: Border rock, Latin folk and blues fuse freshly on "American Horizon" (Cenzontles, B+), a bilingual song cycle combining the talents of the female-fronted Los Cenzontles, David Hidalgo of Los Lobos and the veteran folk fusionist Taj Mahal.

I missed the PBS special, drat, but admire the depth and breadth of the just-out soundtrack disc for "Latin Music USA" (Sony/Discos 605, B+).