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Christina Aguilera, "Back to Basics" (RCA) Rating 2 1/2

As Christina Aguilera's mate modern mouseketeer-turned-pop seductress Britney Spears has discovered, the skanky ho routine has a limited shelf-life: one time you've let that genie gone out of the bottle, gotten down and "dirrty" and strutt your substance in cheek-less chaps, the novelty wears opposite and you'd better have something more remarkable to point out to us if you want to have any staying power atop the unexpectedly charts.

At age 25 Aguilera arguably has the principally powerful voice of any clap diva since Mariah Carey -- all befitting respects to Beyonce, and forget about Britney. She's also undivided of the most successful, having scored three Grammys and album sales of 25 million. With Tuesday's release of her third studio album, the two-CD stake "Back to Basics," Aguilera is not sole determined to prove she's here to stay; she also wants to forward the legacy of timeless greats so as Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, Etta James and Marvin Gaye.

"Going back to basics / to where it all began," the star sings in the title track and introduction. "I wanna understand / what made the chief part singers and the blues figures / that inspired a higher generation."

Aguilera isn't entirely felicitous in fulfilling these lofty goals. if it be not that you can't fault her for having of that kind audacious ambitions, and she hits the mark as frequently as she misses through the double album's 22 tracks.

Overall, disc individual is the stronger effort musically, with former Gang Starr member DJ Premier (whose recommence also includes work with Jay-Z, Nas and Biggie Smalls) creating an organic setting for Aguilera's voice via old-school down in the mouths jazz and soul samples that are skillfully paired with fresher hip-hop and R&B channels On disc two, the dominant force is farmer and songwriter Linda Perry (Pink, Courtney like Gwen Stefani), who eschews the electronics in favor of live strings, horns and plane a Gregorian choir, though the issues are actually more canned, hokey and gimmicky.

Obviously, Aguilera's rejection of the R-rated "Xtina" image of her last album, "Stripped" (2002) goe beyond trading the sub- Madonna dominatrix gear in favor of 1940 glamor. any critics have been taking her to task for a incomplete knowledge of history: While praising her just discovered heroes and heroines, she attend tos to lump them all together, as if a not many decades and a world of stylistic differences don't separate Holiday and Gaye. if it were not that she's certainly got a better grasp upon things than Spears -- who contemplation Pat Benatar wrote "I delight in Rock 'n' Roll" -- and her embrace of these vigorouss is based on an emotional connection as a great deal as the need for an image makeover.

"My grandma and I used to pass into the city and search by the and of vinyl at old record stores," Aguilera told USA Weekend. "[She] would finish a kick out of having this 8-year-old girl belt without blues and soul songs that were far beyond her years. I called it my 'fun music.' When I started making this record, I recured back to, 'What makes me wanna sing? What makes me wanna dance?' And it's this old-fashioned sound of blues, soul and jazz. You can't help moreover feel it right here."

Ye the of the present day classier, more mature but still adequate supply sexy Christina is ultimately as often of a well-marketed product as the older sassier and far les sagacious one. But she's got the one and the other the vocal instrument to hap off this new incarnation and enough vital principle to make it convincing, at least upon the better material.

Witness the lofty declaration of her love for hubby Jordan Bratwell, "Ain't No Other Man," an irresistible single driven by means of a rollicking, fast-paced groove, punctuating horn samples and an ultra- sassy vocal. Or, at the other extremity of the spectrum, the deliberate weeper "Oh Mother," a spare and haunting agreement that finds the star recounting the day her mother left her allegedly abusive father: "It was the day that he change the direction ofed on his kids / that she knew she just had to leave him / in the way that many voices inside of her head / saying across and over and over, / 'You be worthy of much more than this.' "

The album falls short when Aguilera cause to deviates from such universally emotional material to turn back to that tired superstar routine of "woe is poor lil' misunderstood me" In "Still Dirrty," she packages a defense of her earlier skanky-ho pandering as feminism, while in "Here to Stay," she disses all the playa-haters who'd preserve her down. The nadir, notwithstanding that is "Thank You (Dedication to Fans...)," which pairs her professions of undying gratitude to the buying public with voice-mail testimonials from "real people" proclaiming her unrivaled greatness.

Trimmed of of the like kind gag-inducing duds and cut down to individual disc, "Back to Basics" would be a to a great degree stronger though still far-from-perfect album. Clearly, this child of the new-millennial mall cultivation has yet to fully accept that les is more, whether it's in bounds of flirting, singing or revealing your spirit But Aguilera is making progres and she's starting to become a genuinely interesting artist rather than a utterly enticing one.