*** CRYSTAL WATERS, “Storyteller”; <i> Mercury</i>

On Crystal Waters’ aptly titled second album, the singer best known for the 1991 dance-pop hit “Gypsy Woman” flat out astonishes, confounding all expectations by delivering one of the year’s most ambitious--and most fully realized--dance albums.

The odds were against her after her shoddy debut album stamped her as a one-hit wonder. But blending hip-hop textures and sensibilities, swinging jazz inflections and sizzling funk with state-of-the-art dance grooves, Waters comes across as a serious talent.

At the core of that talent is her lyrical style (she wrote all the words), which fuses many elements--sexy playfulness with compassion, a keen eye for detail with social consciousness. Linking them all is an uncanny knack for pop hooks. Her eccentric vocal style--a slightly demented version of Eartha Kitt’s--is both warmer and sexier this time around, sparingly dishing out her idiosyncratic squeals.

Whether it’s the sugary, hip-hop, doo-wop inner-city fantasy of “Ghetto Day,” the raucous party jam “I Believe I Love You” or the menacingly delivered tale of incest and a mother’s revenge on “Daddy Do,” Waters leaps to the forefront of dance divadom with elements all too rare in dance music: style and personality.

New albums are rated on a scale of one star (poor), two stars (fair), three stars (good) and four stars (excellent).