Christina Aguilera: Not Your Puppet - -- by Kim Stitzel, with additional reporting by SuChin Pak - Biography - http://maxpages.com/christinarules/Not_Your

-- by Kim Stitzel, with additional reporting by SuChin Pak

"I have a lot of aggression in me that needs to come out in a not-very-precise or articulate way," says the petite blonde in the pink sleeveless sweater. "Like, there's one track where I'm screaming at the top of my lungs, kind of like Courtney Love. It's crazy."

Pushing up her Lil' Kim shades, Christina Aguilera sits back in her chair inside an L.A. recording studio. She adjusts the collection of slender gold chains around her neck; a Playboy bunny logo charm dangles off one, while another bears a flashy b-girl nameplate reading "X-tina," her nickname. Cartoon-kitten pins dot the legwarmer on her right arm. She nonchalantly checks her makeup, drawing attention to the tiny barbell that pierces the skin just below her lower lip — a recent companion to the ring in her left nostril.

This isn't exactly what we expected from her nearly three years ago, when she submitted "Genie in a Bottle" as entry into pop's class of '99. When your first album debuts at #1 and goes on to sell nearly 8 million copies, you'd think messing with The Formula would be a bad idea. Yet it was always apparent that Aguilera isn't like the other girls. She has brass, this one.

"Whenever you're new to a label and 17, as I was at the time, you're kind of told what to do," Aguilera, now 21, explains. "I just get really bored with sticking to the norm and having the proper conservative image. That's just so not me. When 'Lady Marmalade' came out, so many executives were like, 'She can't do this.' 'It's too Rockwilder and Missy.' 'It's too urban.' And I was like, 'I'm doing it.' Even with certain outfits that I wear, or speaking openly about my past ... I'm not going to sit there and lie. Whether you like me or hate me, that's me.

"Seeing firsthand how crazy this business can be kind of makes you grow up a little faster. In my case, I feel like it's brought me down to Earth, just 'cause I see how fake things can be, or how unreal it is. That's why this record is so important."

While there've been other albums in the interim — a holiday record, a Spanish-language LP and an unauthorized collection of early demos — "this record," still untitled, is Aguilera's second album proper, a melting pot of soul, R&B, rock, hip-hop and Latin influences; a tapestry of songs that are raw, reflective and personal, bearing little resemblance to the readymade ballads and spunky, safe pop of her self-titled debut. Aguilera says she's calling the shots this time around, from her image to production to songwriting.

"A lot of my past is in this record," she explains. "What I was going through on tour, what's in my head about everything, about my personal life. It's like an open book. A storybook, from beginning to end. I'm telling my story."

Aguilera's story has its share of drama and downers, and she's working through her issues in her music and turning the negatives of her life into positives. She questions, challenges and ultimately accepts herself on "Beautiful," a raw, powerful ballad that anyone who's roasted her over her outrageous getups should hear. She unloads on backstabbing fake friends on "Fighter." On another track, which she calls a "twisted lullaby," she confronts ghosts of domestic violence and child abuse — Aguilera and her mother were victimized by her father when she was young — and transforms them into talismans of strength and courage.

Then there's "Can't Hold Us Down," an empowerment anthem with a confident, man-eating swagger that recalls Blu Cantrell's "Hit 'Em Up Style (Oops!)" and Mary J. Blige's "Family Affair." Aguilera echoes the sentiments of pioneering punk Poly Styrene on X-Ray Spex's "Oh Bondage Up Yours!" by kicking against men who think women "should be seen and not heard." "So what do we do, girls?" she asks on the chorus. "Shout louder!"

"That was kind of inspired off the lil' controversy," Aguilera says with a sly smile. The controversy, of course, being the two-pronged attack by Eminem and Limp Bizkit's Fred Durst, both of whom declared open season on the diminutive singer in 2000. The first strike came on Eminem's "The Real Slim Shady" with a comment about her doling out sexual favors to Durst, among others. Durst later added fuel to the fire by saying the only reason he performed a surprise duet with her at that year's MTV Video Music Awards was "for the nookie." Aguilera tried to keep her cool, simply wondering aloud what she could have done to draw such ire and oh, by the way, Durst never got no nookie.

"No female should be talked about like
that. ..."

"I'm always getting those calculated answers from people around me, like, 'OK, say this,' and, 'Make sure you don't say anything too mean,' and I saw other people get dissed and they giggled and laughed it off. But mine was harsh," she says of Durst's dis. "It was just coming off of the Eminem [dis]. With the things he was saying — no female should be talked about like that. I'm not gonna laugh it off and say 'Ha ha, it's a funny song, hee hee.' That's just not gonna fly with me, so I just had to speak my piece. I had to be honest about it and speak for all women.

"It's like the girl who, you know, the guy boasts the next day at school about getting laid or something, when it totally didn't happen, and the girl's all meek about it," she explains. "Screw that! I'm not trying to be meek about it. If I have something to say about it and someone offends me, then I'm gonna say it."

Aguilera's collaborator on "Can't Hold Us Down," among several other tracks, has close ties to Slim Shady: Dr. Dre beatminer Scott Storch, a fellow Pennsylvanian. "I originally wanted to work with Dre," she says, "and then I started to work with Scott regularly, and I just fell in love with his style."

She also clicked with Linda Perry, the 4 Non Blondes frontwoman who helped give Aguilera's fellow corseted Marmalady Pink a musical makeover. "I heard some of [Pink's new songs], 'My Vietnam' and things like that, that I thought were so personal and so real on a level where my record was going," Aguilera recalls. "[I thought] Linda would be a really cool person to collaborate with. ... When I met her, she showed me how to sing from a different place. It's an incredible release to scream like that."

"Sexuality is a beautiful thing. ..."

The sonic therapy resulted in several tracks "that were a little difficult" for Aguilera. "One track in particular that I wrote with Linda, it sounds like a twisted lullaby," she continues. "It's about my childhood and past. Not to get too specific, but I've spoken openly about trying to get the word out about domestic violence and child abuse, so one of the songs is really personal. I'm not afraid to do that, because I feel like so many other young people in certain situations like this [can see that] someone coming from that background could grow up and do something so great and use a bad experience and turn it into a good one. I turned to music originally because of my past and needing a release or an outlet to get out anger or frustration or hurt."

Another of her therapeutic collaborations with Perry is the aforementioned "Beautiful," an achingly rich ballad which finds Aguilera stepping into the territory of operatic '70s rock-soul sister Minnie Riperton and icy '60s icon Julie Driscoll — a blue-eyed soul star who, like Aguilera, turned her back on being a pop mannequin to make more experimental pursuits. She, too, had a taste for memorable hair and outlandish eye makeup.

"It's all about being proud of who you are, no matter what people say ... you still know you're beautiful," Aguilera says of the track. "It's an amazing thing to say, 'I'm beautiful,' without feeling like you're cocky. It's a really cool feeling to be able to sing that so raw."

Equally unexpected are the guests Aguilera hopes to have on her album, including Dave Navarro, Eve, Timbaland and Petey Pablo ("He's so cute," she says). She's planning to include a cover of a track by her heroine, Etta James, as well as a sensual take on Terence Trent D'Arby's "Sign Your Name," from 1987. "Sexuality is a beautiful thing. ... It's something that's just a part of me," she says of her approach to the song. "It's one of the better parts of being a woman. We're sexier than guys."

"I can't hide. I'm not a puppet."

The calmness and poise Aguilera displays in the interview room all but vanishes when she gets in gear to track a few verses for "Infatuation." While the guys in the booth get ready, she fidgets in her chair and yanks at her bracelets. The headphones come off, go on, and come off again as she jumps up and grabs a bottle of water, then asks for coffee, anxious to get on the mic. When all is finally in place, she lays down some lines, making it clear that she's traded in the wholesome hunks from her "Genie in a Bottle" house party for a sweaty entanglement with a tattooed Boriqua. When it's over, she sits back and glows with pride.

"I'm completely excited and I'm not really scared, because this is me," she says. "I can't hide. I'm not a puppet. I can't just sit up there and keep doing the same kind of music. It's time for me to explore."

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Page Updated Sun Oct 13, 2002 2:00am EDT