pretty narrow formula. That three-beat rhythm has its limitations, and if you can't break through the thick patois to get at the jokes and references, forget it. But music this geared to the dance floor and the rough-and-tumble of local slang is capable of great richness. And hip-hop, which has become a major part of dance hall, is the ingredient making this music change by the month.

A few years ago, Beenie Man took his purple crayon and redrew the whole skyline for dance-hall DJs: He went to Nashville and recorded a country tune. On the evidence of Art and Life, he's still thinking beyond the basic dance-hall rhythms and textures. Without being defined by any particular rhetorical or ideological position, he's made a breezy but severely eclectic record.

In "Ola," Beenie Man plays the international Lothario, bragging about girls from Singapore who want loving galore, etc. But the depth of the drum sounds, the organ humming in the background and a hook from the Bangles' "Walk Like an Egyptian" make this more than your average dance-hall track. The game of catch between Timbaland and dance hall -- his borrowings from it, its borrowings from him -- continues in the electronic clatter of Beenie Man's "Jamaica Way," which tells the story of his apprenticeship with the producer King Tubby. "Tumble" gets a little Latin-music flavor, with some vocals in Spanish and an Arturo Sandoval trumpet solo; the title track is chilled-out, mentholated, religious roots reggae. But the heart-stopping act of cultural sandwich-making happens in "Love Me Now," with guests Wyclef Jean and Redman: The sacred and the profane become one as a hymnlike refrain is laid over a repeated one-bar bite of Naughty By Nature's "O.P.P."

The dance-hall DJ who has peeled off most seriously from its mainstream must be Buju Banton, whose music has cooled, softened and expanded since he turned Rastafarian in the mid-Nineties; it looks as if his new association with Epitaph Records, the West Coast punk label, is going to suit him well. Unchained Spirit combines growly, spitfire-patois dance hall, in "Woman Dem Phat"; acoustic guitars and sighing choruses, in "Voice of Jah"; straight old-school ska, in "Better Must Come"; and anthemic folk rock, in "No More Misty Days," which includes the guitar of Rancid's Tim Armstrong. It's an album full of political and philosophical searching -- "What is life? What does