Mary J. Blige / Macy Gray

The title of Mary J. Blige’s new CD is laughable. Even Blige knows that if she didn’t exude at least a smidgen of melodrama, people would think she’d had a lobotomy, or at least some really good meds. And if the title were true, the album wouldn’t include a bluesy song devoted to premenstrual syndrome (“My lower back is aching / And my clothes don’t fit / Now ain’t that a bitch”) or a tune that gets her histrionic point across by sampling the theme from that daily drama fix The Young and the Restless.

That has always been what sets Blige apart: She knows how to weave urban stress and melancholia gracefully in a song. Before this very model of a new-jack drama-mama came along, no other young contemporary R&B songstress considered it worthwhile to tenderly carry on about how much of a hassle it is to be a black woman in these roughneckian times. Even today, as legions of soul sistas gripe and groan to satisfying grooves, Blige is still the reigning queen of pain.

But this doesn’t mean that Drama is all tears and fears. In fact, it’s one of the most thoroughly enjoyable R&B albums out there. It never loses its step. Believe it or not, Blige hasn’t been this perky since her What’s the 411? debut.

A flurry of all-star producers helps maintain the album’s good-to-great-to-downright-magnificent momentum. We all know Dr. Dre’s postmillennial sock-hop number “Family Affair” by heart now. Producers du jour the Neptunes drop their scaly, ghetto-exotic riffs on “Steal Away.” Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis produce the title track. Even Missy Elliott shows up on “Never Been,” bearing the gift of retro-soul backbeat to accompany Blige’s pining.

So while this album puts the lie to its title, Blige tones down the complaining and arms herself with masterful material. She ends up sounding more a winner than a whiner.

Now, as for neo-soul sista Macy Gray, that girl needs Jesus. Macy Gray’s new album is titled The Id, but she may as well have thrown in the ego and the superego for good measure. (After all, this is the same calculating gal who came to the MTV Video Music Awards wearing a dress that literally told people to buy her album. How’s that for self-promotion?) Not since Victoria Williams and Ol’ Dirty Bastard has a performer’s flakiness worked so well in her favor. On The Id, she touches on a slew of emotions that may make you wonder what the hell kinda relationships she’s been through.

Gray’s CD is all about embracing and expressing your “hidden feelings.” Love and sex — with a little bit of free will thrown in — are the subjects included in Gray’s lesson plan, and to convey her myriad messages Gray assumes more identities than Tori Amos on Strange Little Girls.

With the liberating songs “Sexual Revolution” and “Harry,” Gray anoints herself as a free-love child, a sexual spirit who’s gotta have it and just can’t be tied down with one man. However, as evidenced on the manic opening track, “Relating to a Psychopath,” and the self-explanatory “Gimme All Your Lovin’ or I Will Kill You” (which includes the memorable line “It’s amazing what a gun to the head can do”), she also assumes the unstable persona of a woman who, shall we say, believes in love a wee bit too much.

But she throws some genuine heartbreak into the proceedings too. In the lackadaisical “Boo,” she sings about being on the losing end of a bad relationship (“Never settle for the things that you don’t really want / ‘Cause all it gets you is a big ol’ piece of unhappiness”). And on the torchy, soulful “Don’t Come Around,” she encourages an ex not to give her the let’s-be-friends gambit (“If we break up, then that’s where it ends”).

But through all this role-playing, there’s an honest sweetness in Gray’s music. And with the exception of the nonsensical circus of “Oblivion,” she serves up another one of those funky, trippy and emotionally rich albums she’s getting good at. In the end, Gray sells herself as just a gal looking for a dude to spoon with at night. But don’t cross her — she’s strapped!