Soul-pop grooves make their debut

Three soul-pop stars - Chris Brown, Jennifer Hudson and Aretha Franklin - have albums dropping today. Brown's and Hudson's are brand-new affairs; Franklin's is a celebratory box revisiting a formative chunk of her career. Each, in its own way, shows signs of artistic split personality. Good for keeping their "edge" on.

BROWN-NOSING: It's useful for pop stars to air their dirty laundry in song, to turn personal travails into fodder for the next album. Rihanna bounced back from her abusive relationship with Chris Brown on her last album. Now it's his turn to make lemons into lemonade with "F.A.M.E."(Jive, B).

You gotta wonder how well his schizoid nature will play with the ladies, however. One minute ("Deuces") he's on his way to a club, growlin' about a "liar" of a girl and people waiting for him to "f-up" (again).

In the next breath ("Up 2 You"), he's putting on his sincere, submissive crooner's voice and attitude for the (potential) love of his life.

And back and forth this seesaw goes over 17 (!) soul and hip-hop jams. At one extreme, little Justin Bieber assists on the G-rated ballad "Next 2 You." At the other end, lascivious Ludacris and Wiz Kalifa help Brown get his mojo back with (respectively) the ultra-steamy "Wet the Bed" and dance-hall throw-down "Bomb," almost answering Beyonce's "Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)."

Oh, and while we're talking knockoffs, please note how much Brown's "Yeah 3x" sounds like anything party hearty from Black Eyed Peas. Ready to forgive him now?

THE SKINNY ON J.HUD: Know the expression, "Inside every fat person, there's a thin one fighting to get out"? On her new set, "I Remember Me" (Arista, B+), soul diva/actress Jennifer Hudson is living the dream, flashing a slender, sexy look to match the thoroughly modern, minimalist testifiers crafted for her by talents like Alicia Keys, R. Kelly and Ne-Yo, the latter with a Neo-Motown-ish "Why Is It So Hard."

The album's haunted title tune and equally gone-but-not-forgotten themed "Still Here" (by Diane Warren) are major tear-jerkers (in a good way). Still, it's kinda hard buying the "if I can find love, anybody can" sentiments of "Everybody Needs Love." Girl, you got it going on!

FRANKLIN RE-CONSIDERED: Here's another oft-repeated mantra: Aretha Franklin was "wasted" by Columbia Records in the early 1960s, then "saved" by the hipster, down-home gang at Atlantic. After sifting through the 11-CD plus DVD box set "Take a Look: Aretha Franklin Complete on Columbia" (Legacy, A-) encapsulating the former period, I'll no longer be repeating that tale.

Sure, the newly secularized singer/keyboardist, then in her early 20s, had to suffer some sappy productions at Columbia (heavy on the strings and backup singers), which aimed to cast her as a female Ray Charles or Johnny Mathis, then one of Columbia's superstars.

Occasionally, a producer demanded she sing in an unrecognizable, girly-girl upper register. And with a conservative Mitch Miller running the label's A&R department, Franklin had to bring something new to (yawn) evergreens and show tunes.

But damned if she didn't uniquely merge her gospel, blues and jazz tastes, and her (no two performances exactly alike) interpretive skills so that even warhorses like "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" and "Ac-cent-tchu-ate The Positive" came off with a fresh attitude. And when better minds (like producers John Hammond and Clyde Otis) prevailed, Franklin's small combo could do just dandy, swinging on everything from "Misty" to "If I Had a Hammer."

Liner notes suggest that if she'd stuck at Columbia through the Civil Rights and women's movements, Franklin would have found her "Respect" and "Natural Woman." The talent was already there in the Columbia years, but the planets weren't quite in alignment. (Also out today: the single-disc "Aretha Franklin: The Great American Songbook," culled from this box set.)