All of which is a shame, because some of those shoulda-been glossy mammoth pop hits are, when you listen to them, as funky, funny, skillful, romantic, and bad-ass as anything that did blow up on mainstream radio...or on the indie websites, for that matter. As some examples:

ISYSS - The Way We Do (Arista, 2002)

Obviously inspired by the thermonuclear success of Destiny’s Child, Isyss’ sole release features four lithesome lovelies showing skin on the cover and some production work by Kevin “Shek’speare” Briggs, the mastermind behind much of The Writing's on the Wall. This is hardly just a retread, though. In the first place, lead singer Quierra Davis-Martin has a devastating nasal burr and an idiosyncratic, occasionally off-balance sense of phrasing which is miles from Beyoncés more conventionally perfect gospel deliver. And in the second place...disco. There was about half a minute there in the early oughts where the early eighties came back with a vengeance, and this album is one of the more glorious results. “Uh Uh, Uh Uh” is an absolutely fearsome dance-floor strut, with producer Billy Moss slamming the cheesy beat and swirling synths while the girls breath the title syllables as both negation and orgasmic come-on. The lyrics throughout the album, too, are surprisingly fresh — “Oh No She Didn’t,” for example, isn’t about a love rival, as you’d expect, but about a roommate who won’t pay her bills. “Who’s content with living just like a slob/ Who needs to get her ass out and get another job.” “Stood Up,” another discoed-out number, chronicles the tragedy of waiting for a date who never shows over one of Shek’speare’s best staggering sound-scapes, complete with burping keyboards, cell-phone rings, and what sounds like synthesized castanets.

Brandy - Afrodisiac (Atlantic, 2004)

The commercial failure of this album is altogether a mystery. Brandy and Timbaland — how could that go wrong? The problem isn’t the music, anyway; this is indisputably Brandy’s best album...and it may be Timbaland’s as well. Brandy’s rich, resonant, slightly burred vocals fit perfectly with the washes of sound in Timbaland’s mature style. Far from being overpowered, Brandy instead becomes the most potent effect in Timbaland’s arsenal. On “Who Is She 2 U,” Timbaland opens with some patented funky/goofy stuttering and then Brandy slides in with her patented heart-stopping vocals, one of the sexiest sounds in R & B. The whole album’s like that; idiosyncratic genius and funky wit fused with absolutely unironic heartbreak and desire. Maybe Brandy’s fans just weren’t ready for her to go avant-garde and Timbaland’s weren’t ready to see him embrace the sincerity of the slow jam. Which is said fan's loss; this is one of the great syntheses of black music in the last twenty years at least.

Kelly Rowland - Ms. Kelly (Music World Music, 2007)

Destiny Child’s Kelly Rowland had a big hit with her first solo effort, Simply Deep, and then her second outing stiffed. Why? Damned if I know. Her singing sounds great, especially on the seductive mid-tempo bump-and-grind of the opening track, “Like This.” Rowland’s Houston accent is such an individual presence that you can imagine it leaving the singer to a romantic evening in the crib with her man while it heads off to the club and break hearts on its own recognizance. The album features fine production efforts from Scott Storch, Tank, and especially Soulshock and Karlin, whose “Still In Love With My Ex” is probably the best thing they’ve ever done. Over sweet plunked strings and sweeter harmonies, Rowland’s voice is tight with helpless agony as she goes about breaking her man’s heart. “I know your family love me/ and I love them too,” and then the chorus comes in with, “I’m so sorry.” The contrast between the girl group innocence of the music and the mature pain of the lyrics is brutal.

Nivea - Complicated (Jive, 2005)

Nivea’s second album may have been too cheerfully clever for its own good. Complicated has enough cheesy off-color metaphors to keep even Biz Markie entertained, from “Parking Lot” (“I’m ready to take your order...taste it right here in the parking lot,”) to the faux-Bollywood, shamelessly ethnically confused yodel of “Indian Dance,” (“Boy, I’ll have you singing like an Indian,”) to the more direct single-entendre of “Quickie,” (with a rap assist from Rasheeda: “Come and get it, cause I’m workin’ with a time limit.”) Maybe that all would have been okay, but then she had to throw in “Complicated,” one of then-love-interest The-Dream’s lyrical productions, shimmering with rapturous layers as if it just wandered in from a shoegaze album. Label execs looked at the whole bizarre package...and decided to promote Ciara’s more straightforwardly tough Goodies instead. Ciara’s gone on to better things (her second album The Evolution is a glorious electro-stew of Afrofuturist weirdness) but Nivea’s career has never recovered.

-----------------------------

There’s plenty more where these came from; just for starters, I would highly recommend (and, indeed have highly recommended in other venues) Brooke Valentine’s Chain Letter, Ashanti’s much-maligned Concrete Rose, and self-titled debuts from Toya, LeToya and Shareefa. Go forth, then, and discover this mysterious yet quintessentially American music, unknown to all but a select few hundred thousand.