Dianne Reeves, “When You Know” (Blue Note Records)

By NEKESA MUMBI MOODY/The Associated Press

Dianne Reeves has an effortless, graceful style that makes anything she sings sound as sweet as nectar — you can’t help but drink it all up.

Expect to get full off of her latest effort, “When You Know,” her first CD in five years. Once again, the jazz vocalist tackles songs that are already part of pop’s musical library, but instead of just old standards, she mixes in newer classics, such as The Temptations’ “Just My Imagination (Running Away With Me).” Whether its that Motown gem or Minnie Ripperton’s “Lovin’ You,” Reeves infuses each with an elegant vibe, but her vocals are varied, becoming playful and sensual on “I’m in Love Again,” while singing with a foreboding tone on the dramatic “In the Midnight Sun.”

But the best track of the album is its only original tune, the juke-joint groove “Today Will Be a Good Day,” written by Reeves herself. An ode to celebrate life as it comes, Reeves goes for rollicking instead of refined, belting out her lines with the sass one can sometimes forget that she has.

CHECK THIS TRACK OUT: Plenty of singers have tried to put their stamp on Ripperton’s karaoke classic, and failed — but Reeves does an admirable cover here, and even hits the high note (though, not as high as the glass-breaking level that Ripperton reached).

BY GLENN GAMBOA/Newsday

Estelle isn’t a worrier.

When her label seemed confused about the direction the British rapper/singer wanted to go in for her new album, she calmly went to see the execs and said, “Let me go, please.”

“I believe that if the music is good, the rest will follow,” she explained, calling from a tour stop in Washington, D.C. “I thought, ‘If this deal doesn’t work, I’ll get another one somewhere else.’ I was writing the album with John Legend and he said, ‘I’ll sign you.’ He made it happen.”

The result of their collaboration is “Shine” (Home School/Atlantic), a collection of hip-hop, old-school soul with bits of reggae and pop thrown in for good measure. The first single “American Boy,” which teams Estelle with Kanye West, has already topped the British charts and is now making its move in America.

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