J. Lo Keeps It Un-Real

Jennifer Lopez can't forget to stay real. To her, it's like breathing. 

Apparently, she doesn't want you to forget it either, given that she keeps singing about it. The genius of this repetition is that it makes the "real" seem (almost) real: You hear it enough, it feels like, well, breathing.

Even if what's real for her and what's real for you aren't exactly the same thing, the J. Lo version clearly has its appeal. Her up-from-the-Bronx story has everything going for it, from early desires (those shots of young Lopez in dance class that appear on Driven suggest she once had an almost endearing vulnerability; she's so energetic, so eager), to rapturous romances to tabloidish thrills.

In the retelling, the story expands. As Diane Sawyer puts it, "She's not just a star. She's a kind of supernova." And it has inspired the J. Lo machine to monumental acts of imagination, not to mention reiteration ("I'm still, I'm still ..."). 

Recently, she's taken to dropping a realness-affirming single at the same time she's appearing in broadly unreal romantic comedies. So, for instance, she'll proclaim, "I'm Real" (in original and remix versions) while starring in The Wedding Planner and planning a marriage, say, to Cris Judd. (The record and movie opened at the top of their respective charts in 2001; the marriage did less well.)

This year, Lopez is working the same combination, with the release of a fourth album ("This is Me ... Then," selling 314,132 copies in its first week, but who's counting?), a hit single ("Jenny From the Block," featuring homegirl with very real-looking MCs Jadakiss and Styles), a non-meltdown interview with Diane Sawyer concerning her big pink diamond from the Sexiest Man Alive ("He is my partner, he is my best friend"), and, of course, the feel-goody Cinderella movie, Maid in Manhattan.

As the marketing for the album included -- or morphed into -- marketing for the movie and the marriage, "This Is Me ... Then" seemed almost anti-climatic. Still, it handles its business much like her previous albums have done: It's pleasant and insubstantial, less dancey than ballady this time, attributed to her so-very-sincere love with La Ben, though her slender voice is hardly the sort to manage big sound. 

Laced through with hip-hop beats and dreamy keyboard work, "This is Me ... Then" is blithely out of touch, because it can be. Her representation of a "real" Jennifer, then or now, needn't expose anything beyond the wealth of non-information (and gossip that passes as news and information) that's already out there.

"I can be anything you need," Lopez coos at the end of "The One" (which borrows concept, sound and lyrics from "You Are Everything"). 

And it's true, that is precisely what Lopez can be, much as her first (and very smart) video, for "If You Had My Love," narrated, with its emphasis on fantasy and voyeurism.

The new CD comes with a mini-brochure for "Glow," her "fresh, sexy, clean" fragrance/body lotion/shower gel-line, and that's pretty much what it feels like: a means to sell you something else -- mostly, Lopez the Dream Girl. The tracks cover limited thematic ground having to do with her inspiring new romance. Both the deft opener, "Still," and the cover of Carly Simon's "You Belong to Me" feature surprisingly airy arrangements, with the elegant Omar Hakim on drums.

In keeping with Lopez's penchant for profitable duets-with-rappers, the album also includes a respectable duet with LL Cool J, "All I Have," which they performed with earnest charm on the Today Show Dec. 6 for the students at Kips Bay High School, her alma mater. 

The kids loved the show, and no wonder: They can almost imagine being Dream Girl, making the leap she's made, with limited skills, ferocious determination, and an apparently unshakable faith in herself.