WELCOME TO THE CLUB; LATINO POP PERFORMERS SHATTER BARRIERS AS THEY REACH THE TOP.

Byline: Guy Garcia The New York Times

The streets of Times Square were slick from a spring rain as actress Jennifer Lopez leaned forward in the backseat of her chauffeured sedan and pointed to a nondescript brick building in a neighborhood where giant ads for movies, theater and music vie for attention.

``That's the studio where I used to go to dance classes,'' she said. ``I used to take the No. 6 train downtown from the Bronx. I was about 18. It was about making the transition from this girl in Castle Hill who could have been a lawyer to dancing, singing and auditioning, letting the artist in me come out.''

Those memories inspired the title of Lopez's debut album, ``On the Six.'' Reflecting the cross-cultural experience of her formative years, the record presents a polished urban mix of Latin, rhythm-and-blues and soul-tinged ballads and dance numbers, with most of the songs in English but a few in Spanish, like a salsa-flavored duet with her fellow ``Nuyorican'' singer Marc Anthony.

Lopez sees the album as a kind of personal soundtrack for a journey that represents much more than the 40-minute subway ride to Manhattan. For her, the creative hurly-burly of the city was not just the doorstep to a new career; it was an affirmation of the multicultural, multimedia sensibility that would shape her artistically and ultimately make her a star.

``The music on the record is directly linked to the person I am,'' she said. ``It relates back to that first stop - what my background is, where I grew up in the Bronx, who my parents were, where I went to school. It's all because of where I started.''

``On the Six'' also secured Lopez's place on the rapidly growing list of Latino artists who can sell millions of records as well as cause pandemonium whenever they appear in public. Earlier this month, the album entered the Billboard chart at No. 8, and the first single, ``If You Had My Love,'' topped both the pop and rhythm-and-blues charts.

The album's success follows on the heels of Ricky Martin's genre-blurring megahit, ``Livin' La Vida Loca.'' Meanwhile, snazzy new videos from both artists are getting heavy exposure on MTV, cementing their image as up-and-coming icons.

The ascent of Martin, Lopez and Anthony, who has already sold millions of records in Spanish and whose first English-language album will be released in September, has prompted the American news media to declare a Latino explosion that heralds not just a new level of commercial success for Latino-American singers but the long-awaited acceptance of Latin music into the pop mainstream.

In magazines from Time to Latina, and on television programs around the world, the message is repeated like a mantra: Latinos have arrived, and the whole world is listening.

``It's been building, but this time it's a wave and it's got a lot of momentum,'' said Tommy Mottola, the chairman of Sony Music Entertainment, whose roster includes Lopez, Martin and Anthony as well as the Colombian-born pop rocker Shakira and Elvis Crespo, a New York-born Latino singer who melds Dominican merengue with modern dance beats. ``This craze, this phenomenon is not exactly new to us; it's just that everybody's catching on to it, recognizing it and jumping on the bandwagon.''

Yet for some longtime fans of Latino culture - and many Latinos themselves - the breathless announcements that Latinos have finally ``crossed over'' at best evokes an uneasy sense of deja vu. Over the last several decades, Latin entertainers have more than once seemed poised to break into the mainstream, only to slip back into the cultural margins.

Since the 1930s - when anyone of Latino ancestry was euphemistically described as Spanish - Xavier Cugat, Perez Prado, Desi Arnaz, Carmen Miranda, Ritchie Valens, Ray Baretto and Carlos Santana have all scored hits, but their impact proved to be limited or short-lived.

More recently, Julio Iglesias, Gloria Estefan, Jon Secada and the rock group Los Lobos have made inroads in pop, rock and dance music. But for the most part Latino pop remained a slumbering giant, hemmed in by the language barrier and consumer consternation over a plethora of complex rhythmic styles.

Then came Martin, whose incendiary performance at the 1999 Grammy Awards show proved what many record executives already knew: Latin pop has global appeal. Suddenly, a number of forces that had been building for years - a thriving international market for Latin music and a fast-growing Latino population in the United States, soon to become the country's largest minority - reached critical mass, and the mass media followed.

It didn't hurt that Martin, Lopez and Anthony all had English-language albums in the works, or that the urban rhythms they embraced had long ago seeped into the pop music vernacular. In fact, the so-called Latino craze may actually be a misnomer.

What is now being hailed as ``Latino Pop'' is really modern urban American music, and while the excitement being generated by performers like Lopez and Martin may indeed spill over into more ethnic musical forms, there is no guarantee that lesser-known performers will benefit.

Martin's stage persona may at times evoke Desi Arnaz's conga-playing Latin lover, but the critical difference this time around is that to millions of shrieking teen-agers, he is no more exotic than the boy next door. ``Haven't Jennifer Lopez and Ricky Martin embodied the future of America in some ways?'' asked Christy Haubegger, publisher of Latina. ``These bilingual, bicultural kids: Isn't that America? They are amalgams of all kinds of ethnic influences. They are mirrors. I'm not sure if they are projecting or reflecting, maybe both.''

The new Latino stars also share an ability to move between different mediums, whether they be records, movies, television, theater or the Internet. Martin, who first tasted fame as a member of the Latin teen group Menudo, did a stint on the television soap opera ``General Hospital'' and played Marius in the Broadway production of ``Les Miserables.''

Anthony has appeared in several movies and starred on Broadway in Paul Simon's gang-crime musical ``The Capeman.'' And Lopez, who was a member of the Fly Girls dance troupe in the television comedy series ``In Living Color,'' has starred in the films ``Selena,'' ``U-turn'' and ``Out of Sight.''

Lopez, who, like Martin and Anthony is in her 20s, credits her parents with instilling her self-confidence. ``I don't see boundaries,'' she said. ``I think this generation of Latinos are more open to all of the possibilities, whereas for our parents it was more about survival and struggle and moving to a new country.''

Haubegger said she featured Lopez on the March cover of Latina because she embodied the aspirations of Latino women while appealing to a non-Latino audience. ``She really reflects that dual identity that most of us somehow navigate,'' said Haubegger, a Texas-born Latina who was adopted and reared by Anglo parents.

Haubegger cites another recent Latina cover article about the model Christy Turlington's return to visit her mother's native El Salvador. Haubegger sees the trip as an indication of how far things have come from the days when Rita Hayworth, born Rita Carmen Cansino, whose father was Spanish, had to adopt her Irish mother's maiden name to have a successful career in Hollywood.

``When you have a supermodel publicly embracing her Salvadoran roots, you know there's been a shift,'' Haubegger said. Still, some worry that by popularizing a highly commercial style of urban Latin pop, superstars like Martin and Lopez might actually make it harder for more traditional-sounding and ethnic-looking Latin artists to land a record deal or find an audience.

``It's not crossover; it's step-over,'' said the Panamanian singer and actor Ruben Blades, who shared the title role in ``The Capeman'' with Anthony. ``I'm really happy for Ricky. I think he's a really nice guy, and he's worked very hard, but I'm afraid that what is going to happen now is that the labels are going to create a whole bunch of clones just to make bucks.''

Blades, a three-time Grammy winner who has recorded in both English and Spanish and has collaborated with Lou Reed, Elvis Costello and Sting, recently completed an album with Editus, a Costa Rican combo that fuses tropical beats, Spanish flamenco, jazz and world-beat rhythms.

Blades maintains that the strength of Latin music lies in its diversity, which is grounded in the indigenous traditions of different Latin nations and cultures, all of which can borrow and mix with other styles to create new sounds.

``I hate the word `crossover' with a passion because it is a racist term for people who can't accept the mixture that has already taken place,'' Blades said.

Another sign of Latin music's vitality is the album ``Buena Vista Social Club,'' a collaboration between veteran Cuban musicians and the American guitarist Ry Cooder; the record won a Grammy last year and was the inspiration for a new documentary directed by Wim Wenders.

Still another sign is the popularity of ``The Latin Playboys,'' an offbeat offshoot of Los Lobos that fuses rock and Mexican folk rhythms with spoken-word and ambient electronics.

Meanwhile, Latin elements continue to surface in the music of everyone from Madonna, who recorded the tech-acoustic duet with Martin for his new album, to the California rock band Cake, which recorded an English version of the popular Spanish ballad ``Quizas'' for its album, ``Fashion Nugget.''

Indeed, the little secret in plain view of anyone who has visited a major American city lately is that American pop culture has been quietly and steadily mutating for decades, accumulating influences as ethnically rich and varied as its population.

In other words, the new Latino stars haven't penetrated the American mainstream; they are the mainstream.

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3 Photos

Photo: (1--Cover--Color) BEST OF BOTH WORLDS

Latino performers such as actress-singer Jennifer Lopez redefining mainstream pop

(2) Jennifer Lopez's big-selling debut album, ``On the Six,'' places her at the forefront of what the American media is calling a Latino explosion in pop music.

(3) Sony Music's stable of Latino performers includes New York-born Elvis Crespo, above, Jennifer Lopez and Ricky Martin.