Pity the self-respecting rhythm-and-blues chanteuse.

She can talk all day about being an independent woman, but when it comes time to move the units, she only gets the big promotional bankroll if she strikes a pose within a very narrow, industry-approved range.

Either she’s powered by ultra-fresh hip-hop beats, a frolicsome sexual attitude and a gaggle of guest stars (see the overcooked solo debut of Beyonce Knowles and the mostly listless second effort from Ashanti), or she’s a self-consciously retro “neo-soul” acolyte championing such long-lost virtues as melody (everyone from Mary J. Blige to India.Arie).

Which is why those who care about the health and long-term creative viability of contemporary R&B should kneel down and give thanks for “The Trouble With Being Myself” (Epic) Macy Gray’s irreverent third effort, arriving in stores July 15.

On “Trouble,” the singer and songwriter with the instantly identifiable rasp defies conventional wisdom by charging full steam in both directions at once, while also taking impulsive side trips down little-explored alleys. Her productions, most from veteran Dallas Austin, are at times as extravagantly appointed as Beyonce’s; her appropriations can be as scholarly as India.Arie’s.

The ideas that propel Gray’s 12 new songs are almost all drawn from the classic-R&B songbook. But it’s the force of her individuality – the thing that causes her “trouble” – that lifts commonplace appropriations onto an exotic plane.

Gray converts the rigidly formatted devices of urban pop into raw fuel for her sonic wiggy-world and transforms the most contrived love chorales into something disarmingly meaningful.

She tunes a trite expression such as “I’m so glad we’ve come together again” to a blissed-out frequency unlike anything on your radio dial.

Where her interchangeable peers claw for position on increasingly crowded turf, the 32-year-old Gray seeks sweeping summation on a Princely scale, gathering incandescent pop refrains, smacking hip-hop rhythms and utopian ideals into something proudly multi-generational and category-obliterating. She speaks to the soul and the hips, in a voice that recalls the anguish of late-period Billie Holiday while never sounding so much as a beat behind the times.

Gray starts with elements recognizable to anyone who grew up on “70s R&B. The foundation of one track is pure clavinet-happy Rufus, another descends from Philly Soul balladry, and several utilize the silky strings that Memphis producer Willie Mitchell draped over Al Green’s hits. The first single, “When I See You,” lashes an energetic Jackson Five rhythm guitar to the kind of salacious P-Funk chant that has been missing from the radio since the days of “Up for the Down Stroke.”

After scrambling those references, Gray sprinkles a dash of trippy lucy-in-the-sky imagery into lyrics that talk, with some seriousness and more humility, about fellowship and human connection. Then she turns on the ad libs, and her phrasing yanks any lingering retro-ness into the hyperdrive present. Suddenly, otherwise plain melodies blossom into throaty proclamations of devotion and slight narratives spin into relentlessly bouyant essays on the price of sensitivity in a callous world.

Not many singers could make an idea as contrived as “Jesus for a Day” seem natural. Yet when Gray sings it, practically barking the phrase “Perfect, like a light, Jesus for just a night,” her joy is infectious. You’d listen no matter what she was talking about, but the forthright spirituality here and on several other tracks makes her phrases devastating in a way the work of the Beyonce-bots rarely are.

That Gray isn’t interested in chasing trends or acquiring Escalades is evident on the trippy collaboration with Beck, “It Ain’t the Money,” a tirade about misplaced priorities that includes the irresistible line “Bet you got a TV built in your jet skis.” But it’s the orchestral “She Don’t Write Songs About You” – one of several pieces that evoke the transcendant vision of Sly Stone – and the lugubrious “Things That Made Me Change” that show the extent of Gray’s ambition: Dotted with dissonance and built on unconventional structures, alternating between firm pulses and drifting reveries, the pieces push at the edges of “acceptable” R&B fare.

“The Trouble With Being Myself” is challenging, but not recklessly radical. Its compositions represent a broader – and bolder – vision of urban music than what has been selling. And they show Macy Gray to be among the few artists inclined to resist character-free MTV fame in favor of music that’s all her own, yet enriched with the wisdom of the ages.

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(c) 2003, The Philadelphia Inquirer.

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ARCHIVE PHOTOS on KRT Direct (from KRT Photo Service, 202-383-6099): macy+gray

AP-NY-07-14-03 0607EDT