Ricky Martin, "Musica + Alma + Sexo" (Sony U.S. Latin)The back story is upfront on his first studio album since 2005 and his first since he announced last year on his website that he is "proud to say that I am a fortunate homosexual man." On this album his usual exhortations to seize life's pleasures mingle with coming-out manifestos, and he smiles through them all.
The video clip for the album's first single in English, a lilting duet with Joss Stone called "The Best Thing About Me Is You," shows Martin pulling a gag off his mouth, then juxtaposes him with gay and straight couples with equal signs painted on their chests. The album also includes "Sera Sera" ("It Will Be, It Will Be"), which promises those who feel "unequal, condemned, marginalized without mercy" that "the future now is yours," and "Basta Ya" ("Enough"), which vows to stop "denying what I want" and decides, "I'll be true to myself." In "No Te Miento" ("I'm Not a Liar") he insists that "with you I'll lead an open life." Yet Martin is a pop star before he's a crusader, and he's clearly determined to reach a wide audience, both Spanish- and English-speaking. The sentiments in his new songs are open-ended enough to double as self-affirmations for anyone feeling like an outsider. He's still a gutsy, emotive singer, and the music strives to be up to the minute.
Working with his longtime producer/co-writer, Desmond Child, Martin favors full-bodied arrangements that make big dramatic payoffs out of their hooks in power ballads such as "Basta Ya," "Tu y Yo" ("You and I") and "Te Busco y Te Alcanzo" ("I'll Seek You and I'll Find You"). Nodding toward his native Puerto Rico, Martin collaborates with the reggaeton duo Wisin y Yandel in "Frío" ("Cold"). And in "Cantame Tu Vida" ("Sing Me Your Life"), a Latin-tinged ballad, he sympathizes with desperate and abused street kids.
But a dance pulse runs through most of the album. Bouncy, disco-revival beats, like those that have powered hits by Lady Gaga and Black Eyed Peas, drive "Mas" ("More"), a song about people with dreams coming to the big city; "Te Vas," ("You're Leaving"), a breakup song that still sounds upbeat, and an English-language love song, "Shine." The album pours on pop craftsmanship in a show of confidence and pride. It will test how Martin's mass audience can handle his new openness.
JON PARELES, NEW YORK TIMES
MEN, "Talk About Body" (Iamsound)
For some, Utopia is the suburbs with nuclear families built around heterosexual couples. But for MEN, the new art-performance collective from Le Tigre's JD Samson, Utopia is an ever-propulsive dance party where gender is just another thing to be manipulated with the great pitch-shifter of the imagination, especially febrile at 3 a.m. Think you're a woman? Identify yourself as gay? Every assumed identity gets cooked at high temperature -- with occasional introspective moments and always a brain in the boogie -- in Samson's synth-spiced brew. Gender studies majors, do yourselves a favor: Play "Credit Card Babie$" at your graduation ceremony.
MARGARET WAPPLER, LOS ANGELES TIMES
