DIVAS AND HIP HOP COMBINE FORCES FOR ANIMAL AID

    In a star-studded press conference, British rock icon Sting announced an upcoming project of his new charitable organization.  The Dog and Animal Fanciers Trust (DAFT) will be producing a benefit album of new material pairing Hip Hop's hottest producers with the new young generation of Pop divas.  The project, tentatively titled "For My Home Dogs", will raise money to send disadvantaged young, inner urban dogs to a six week summer camp in the countryside of rural Pennsylvania.  Accompanying Sting at the press conference were Hip Hop producer Puff Daddy -now preferring to call himself Muff Puddly- and Latina superstar Christina Aguilera.

    "We're representing for the canines," Puff/Muff said.  "We going to bring the divas to the 'hood and the 'hood to the divas."

FOR MY HOME DOGS: Various Artists

    This latest all-star benefit album like so many of its ilk is a mixed bag at best as the worlds of Hip Hop gangsta rappers and screechy Pop divas collide in a series of house rocking dance jams.  The opening track, "Dogz In Heat," is a collaboration between Mariah Carey and her new beau, rap impresario Puff Daddy, who now goes by the working name of Stumpy Mugglesworth.  The track starts with a sample of the Commodores chestnut "Brick House."  After a brief spoken introduction dedicating the song to disadvantaged inner urban dogs, Ms. Carey emits a piercing series of high notes, yelps, and glissando whines of such a high frequency that they are nearly inaudible.  The proud possessor of a six octave range, Carey turns loose her famous upper register and the results are surprisingly effective.  The bass track pumps along at a funky clip while Ms. Carey's vocals are so high as to be undetectable to the human ear.  When I played this track in my apartment, I was amazed to see my two pet schnauzers, Lou and Sterling, immediately perk up their ears.

    The second track, "Doggie Styling (Make They Tales Wag)," is a duet between the screechy aging Lolita Brittney Spears and her evil twin,  professional virgin Jessica Simpson.  Produced by Master P, the song starts promisingly as a horn-driven ghetto jam propelled by P's trademark guttural grunts and barks.  Then the groove is shattered by incomprehensible bursts of dueling high-pitched vocal histrionics by Ms. Spears and Ms. Simpson.  Once again, mercifully the results were so high as to be entirely inaudible to the human ear.  However, my dogs quickly responded by howling, barking, and then trying to gnaw through the speaker cables and power cord to the stereo.

    By the time we got to the third track, "Humpin' Yo Leg (Da Old School Mix)" by Jennifer Lopez and the Wu Tang Clan, the dogs were clawing at the doors and Sterling was trying to throw himself out of the window of my twelfth floor apartment.  The police finally came as the Latin-tinged "Mi Puppy" ballad by Christina Aguilera and Missy Elliot began...

...and then I woke up.