D-LIST-Martino 28 STREET HEAT My landlord was screaming at the kid ...

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STREET HEAT My landlord was screaming at the kid sitting in his tricked-out Ford Explorer blasting the new Fat Joe song. He looks like any other Italian from the neighborhood: white high-top Reebok Classic sneaks, sleeveless Armani Exchange t-shirt, spiked black hair, gold chain with a cross. He turns the music down, gets out and walks over to my landlord.

"Nana, ya gotta calm down. What time we eatin'?"

She smacks him in the back of the head. "Why you listenin' to-ah monkey music so loud? Da whole-ah block hear you." She looks at me. "Hey Danny, you listen da monkey music?"

"I love it," I reply. She shakes her head, disappointed. "But I love Jimmy Roselli, too."

"Oh, I-ah love Jimmy Roselli. He sing so nice in Italian. I don' understand what da monkey music is sayin'." She heads into the house.

She's talking about street heat—or popular urban radio jams—that booms out of powerful sub-woofers in the trunks of customized Honda Civics, beat-up Saturns, green Lexuses and so on. I do, indeed, love it. What's not to love about pop music? Or Jimmy Roselli, for that matter. Here's what's playing on a street near you.

CHRISTINA MILIAN, "DIP IT LOW" She sounds like Ashanti, and the beat on the verse cracks with a hard handclap and a slow, rolling bass line. This sets up the chorus, which adds an extra, faster synth beat over the verse as Milian speeds up her delivery. I've been playing it at my bar gigs for a month, and this is what I've observed: Every p.r. princess does a half-ass dance in her pointy-toed high heels.

NINA SKY, "MOVE YA BODY" Last summer, Lumidee sang like a crackling 14-year-old over a Diwali beat, and every rhythmically challenged banker had his hands raised by his girlfriend when she heard "Uh, Oh... Uh, Oh." This song is following the same trajectory, using the coolie dance riddim instead. The real difference is, these 18-year-old twins from Queens can sing.

TERROR SQUAD, "LEAN BACK" Fat Joe can now eat himself to death knowing he has written the worst lyric in hiphop history: "Ya see my niggas don't dance/We just pull up our pants/And do the rockaway." What everyone loves is the slow-grinding bass bumps and menacing gangsta strings. Joe's next single will detail his two years stuck in his apartment, Walter Hudson-style.

KEVIN LYTTLE, "TURN ME ON" It hit number-two on the UK pop charts, and I don't see why this crossover Soca smash won't do the same here. It's all over MTV and the radio, and the Puerto Rican girls just want to yell "boricua" every time they hear it. Don't be surprised when some Hollywood honcho decides to make Dirty Dancing 3: Hot in Kingston, and uses this as its theme. o