Rebirth (Epic)
Jennifer Lopez

When you’re famous enough to have a fragrance named after you, let alone a public more interested in your love life than American foreign policy, chances are good that reality isn’t your strong suit. At best, overexposed divas like Jennifer Lopez are emotional drag queens, wearing lyrics about heartache and insecurity like an expensive wig and glittering fake eyelashes. At worst, they’re humorless and deluded enough to think that they’re higher than camp on the entertainment food chain.
“Rebirth” appears to be a public relations attempt to shed Lopez’s identity as marriage-happy punchline fodder, but she probably should have stayed away a while longer, or at least sought counsel from Lady Chablis beforehand. For starters, her duet with husband Marc Anthony on this year’s Grammy broadcast wasn’t a fluke; no matter how successfully she can steam up a camera lens with her sex appeal, she can’t actually sing that well, even with all of the slickest production assistance money can buy. “Get Right” has a catchy saxophone sample and chorus, but nothing infectious a la “Jenny from the Block” that will require you to extract the song from your head like a rotting tooth.
Most of the record’s songs are flat and slippery, or, in the case of ballads “He’ll Be Back” and “(Can’t Believe) This Is Me,” an overwrought ploy to relate to people who wouldn’t be able to afford J-Lo-style Harry Winston jewelry he comes up with a line of cubic zirconium bangles for the Home Shopping Network – most of us, in other words.