CATHARSIS FROM THE CHOIR

By CHRISTOPHER JOHN FARLEY

Music is the safest sex. Nobody has ever been impregnated, or infected, by listening to Marvin Gaye's sex-saturated ballads (though what couples do while listening to such songs is another matter). This summer the performers who are creating the most erotically cathartic music are the male vocal group Jodeci, whose new CD is called The Show, the After-Party, the Hotel, and the female quartet Xscape, with a new album called Off the Hook. Love songs aren't enough for these groups; they sing lust songs, exploring sweaty emotions rather than sweet ones. Their songs aren't designed to shock listeners, like Madonna's; instead, in casual language they turn common sexual experience and longing into music. "My mom asks me, 'Why do y'all sing about so much sex?'" says Jodeci's Dalvin (all the group's members go by their first name or nickname), whose father is a church pastor. "I tell her, 'Mom, we can't go halfway. We ain't no fake group. It has to be real.'"

Jodeci's new album fulfills the group's early promise. Its 1991 debut album, Forever My Lady, contained three rapturous songs, including the title track; its 1993 follow-up, Diary of a Mad Band, also featured a trio of handsome soul numbers, including Cry for You. Its newest CD, however, offers not just a few potential hit singles but a whole album of appealing music. Its "concept" is to take listeners through a night or so with Jodeci--the parties, the flirtations with female fans and so on. The songs flow into one another as the night winds on. Melodic rhythms rise--like the cooing Pump It Back--and recede. One song, the sublimely earthy Good Luv, features the voices of the quartet accompanied only by an acoustic guitar. The group has never sounded better. The album's only major flaw is its sexist cover art, which features the silhouette of a nude woman.

Xscape's Off the Hook, by contrast, is an album of unconnected, though highly agreeable, songs. Who Can I Run To, the CD's best number, is so immediately likable you might swear you had heard it before (and you might be right--the song was originally performed by the Jones Girls in the '70s). While Jodeci's songs are often about male sexual pursuit, Xscape shows us things from the female perspective. Several of these songs are about women who have been wronged and yet foolishly go back to their men. On the ballad Love's a Funny Thing, the lyrics sound like a transcript from a Ricki Lake segment: "Every time I fall I make myself believe that you are changing and someday the sun will shine."

But it is ultimately the singing, and not the lyrics, that matters most. Both groups, though now thoroughly secular in their aims, have roots in the church. Their vocals are thus full of transporting religious passion, redirected to more worldly concerns. Xscape comprises two sisters, Latocha and Tamika Scott, and two of their friends, Kandi Burruss and Tameka Cottle. The members of the Atlanta-based group became friends in grade school. The Scotts were avid churchgoers, Burruss says, and "if you hung with them, you had to go to church every Sunday, Wednesday and Friday." All four ended up in the choir together.

The two sets of brothers that make up Jodeci--Donald "DeVante Swing" and Dalvin DeGrate, and Cedric "K-Ci" and Joel "JoJo" Hailey--first met when they were gospel-music singers in their native North Carolina. The group's members candidly admit they switched genres because R. and B. is more profitable than gospel. But the secular path has not always been an easy one. In 1993 a woman claimed that DeVante had pointed a gun at her and K-Ci had fondled her. Earlier this year, DeVante pleaded guilty to gun charges in the case, and K-Ci pleaded guilty to sexual contact; both received sentences of probation and community service. Says Dalvin: "Being a role model is a hard job. Once you step off that pedestal, everyone wants to drag you in the mud and beat you down. I don't want to be a role model."

Nonetheless, Jodeci has lately tried to project a more responsible--and marketable--image, helping to found UrbanAID for LIFEbeat, a group that promotes the use of condoms among urban youth. One of the best songs on its new CD, Love U 4 Life, sings the praises of marriage: "I want to take you by the hand/ and walk with you down that aisle." Says DeVante: "We don't want to be single all our lives." Despite Jodeci's bad-boy-next-door image, its music has a sentimental streak, and that is its secret. After the after-party, the members of Jodeci are looking for something more.