Kevin Federline

Maybe the extended silence after K-Fed's debut single, "Popozao," was just to make Playing With Fire a perfectly timed punchline, the vapid playboy's treatise on woeful tabloid stardom, blurted in grade-school rhyme. Federline's need to prove his talents beyond impregnating starlets takes form in braggadocio verse about tearin' ass around Hollywood in cheesy rides, knocking back mid-grade tequila and counting Benjamins -- apparently the answer to the youngster who opens the record by asking, "Grandpa, can you tell me a story about when you were young?" The soft-brained pabulum is well paired with the production: The lifeless underpinning of one would-be single, "America's Most Hated," is outdone by the ejaculating guitar in another, "Lose Control," which K-Fed describes as "hip-hop flavor mixed wit a little bit of rock and roll." But the lingering flavor is that of a bitter pretty boy, one who's too vain to understand that hip-hop takes more than writing your name in Old English font and spittin' about blunts and bitches -- but too dumb to know better.