***1/2 Various Artists

FREESTYLE: GREATEST BEATS VOLUMES 8-10

(Tommy Boy)

No US popular music is less commented upon than "freestyle," the post-disco rhythm sound of American-born Latinos. This is entirely unjust. There's nothing in whiny Brit-boy pop to match the lovestruck fury of Nice and Wild's "Diamond Girl." No Dead Can Dance incantation plumbs the psyche more heatedly than Will to Power's "Dreamin'." Debbie Deb's crystal-glassine "When I Hear Music" remains the standard by which all of today's electronic funk ought to be judged.

You'll find each of these three cornerstones of freestyle's ice cold, in-your-face glamor on this three-CD set, along with pop hits by Exposé, Sweet Sensation, Stevie B, and Noel -- and for-fans-only favorites by earnest Cynthia, melancholy Sandee, passionate Trinere, and gleeful Monet. These are cult stars who thrive within freestyle's formula of frenzied soprano outcry, lover-to-lover serenades, and tightly wound three-beats. And somehow they manage to make the rigidity of the formula mirror the shameless surfacing by which freestyle's anonymous fans broadcast their innermost desires brightly to their nighttime dreamboats.

-- Michael Freedberg