Each singer says her new album is a step forward, an evolution, a triumph - that's what singers always say. record label, and everywhere she went, some guy was shadowing her, shouting the label's catch phrase: ''It's murder!''Īshanti's self-titled debut album, released last year, was a huge hit, thanks largely to a song called ''Foolish,'' on which she pledged loyalty to a man who didn't deserve it: ''I keep on running back to you.'' This was the antithesis of Destiny's Child's dogma: Ashanti sang like a woman who just couldn't help herself.īoth singers have new albums: Beyoncé, 21, just released her inevitable solo debut, ''Dangerously in Love'' (Columbia), and Ashanti, 22, just released her follow-up, ''Chapter II'' (Murder Inc./Island Def Jam). She was, we were constantly reminded, the first lady (or, more often, ''princess'') of the Murder Inc. She made her name by telling gruff rappers how much she loved them, singing stylized duets with Fat Joe and Ja Rule. You might call her a dependent woman, though that's not an insult. If Beyoncé has a mirror-image rival, it's Ashanti. Beyoncé taunted her former bandmates (two original members had left, and so had one of their replacements) while warning the current ones that they, too, were expendable: ''You thought I wouldn't sell without you, sold 9 million.'' That pronoun - ''I'' - is as specific as the sales figure.
That was the not-so-subtle message of ''Survivor,'' the title track from the third and most recent Destiny's Child album. A FEW years ago, Beyoncé made her declaration of independence: ''All the women who independent, throw your hands up at me.'' The song was called ''Independent Women Part I,'' and it was an anthem of self-reliance sung by Destiny's Child, a feisty pop republic made up of three women.īut they weren't equally independent: everyone knew that Beyoncé didn't need the others.