R. Kelly

If you thought that, over the course of 15 years and 10 albums, Kels had exhausted all possible sex metaphors, you'd be wrong. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to "Sex Planet." You'll taste the Milky Way, enter a black hole and visit Uranus, which "I promise will be painless." Kels has a giant rocket, full of fuel, but watch out for meteor showers. Aside from "Planet," animalistic love jawn "The Zoo" and bitter R&B vignette "Real Talk," the album follows the usual formula: club jams featuring popular rappers threaded around mid-tempo love songs delivered in the spoken/sung style Kels pioneered.

This album marks the moments when pop's longest running alleged felon came to release more music after being hit with child pornography charges in 2002 than he did in a decade-plus of untroubled r&b thuggery. Pre-indictment, Kelly's m.o. was to undercut much "Bump 'n' Grind" with a little "I Believe I Can Fly," but now he's added a new trick--not confessions, though the term is tempting, but dramatic pieces like the ridiculously mesmerizing "Trapped in the Closet." This album piles on the bump 'n' grind, from a title track in which Kelly and Snoop share two freaks apiece to the "sexasauras," kangaroos, and jungle noises of the ridiculously sublime "The Zoo." But the standout tracks are a dialogue in a prison visiting room, a duet where he and Usher figure out they're both in love with the same Georgia Tech grad, and the escalating rage of a break-up phone call. "Real Talk," that one's called--which sure beats sexual exploitation as an artistic specialty. (Grade - ***)