Album Reviews : Snow Shows Off Dancehall Talent on ‘Love’

***, SNOW, “Murder Love”, EastWest Comparisons to rapper Vanilla Ice were inevitable in ’93 when Canadian-born Snow held the No. 1 spot on the nation’s singles chart with his tongue-twisting dancehall reggae hit “Informer.” But, aside from being white artists working in black-music genres, the similarities end there.

It’s clear from both his first album, “12 Inches of Snow,” and this new one that, unlike Ice, Snow really is a skilled performer and an exceptional dancehall talent. That’s evident on songs like “Anything for You,” a buoyant duet with Nadine Sutherland, “Things to Say”--a Bob Marley tribute sampling Bill Withers’ “Use Me”--and “Rivertown,” a look at a Jamaican ghetto through the eyes of its young residents.

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* 1/2 Various Artists, “Bad Boys” soundtrack, Work Group/Columbia. Listening to some of the bad writing on the “Bad Boys” soundtrack makes you wonder yet again--where are the great R&B; songwriters? “Someone to Love,” the Jon B.-Babyface duet, is another woefully wimpy songwriting effort by Babyface. Keith Martin’s “Never Find Someone Like You” is a completely banal ballad in the Boyz II Men vein. One of the three original tracks is Xscape’s racy but routine “Work Me Slow.”

The album isn’t a total loss though, since 2Pac, Warren G, Ini Kamoze and alterna-funkers Juster contribute first-rate material. But all these tracks can be found on their own albums.

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** Various artists, “Street Fighter” soundtrack, Priority. Solid contributions such as Ice Cube’s title track and Nas’ call to disarm, “One on One,” are neutralized by rap-by-numbers bumblers from LL Cool J and Craig Mack. Biggest fumble comes from football star Deion Sanders, who proves alarmingly unoriginal. New albums are rated on a scale of one star (poor), two stars (fair), three stars (good) and four stars (excellent).