Little JackieThe StoopReview

Imani Coppola remains best known for her US Top 40 hit, 1997's Legend of A Cowgirl. But after being dropped by Columbia Records when further hits failed to materialise, she set out on her own as a sort of DIY pop star, self-releasing her own home-recorded music and making some quite unexpected friends: former Faith No More frontman Mike Patton, for instance, who invited Coppola to join his many-limbed pop supergroup Peeping Tom. He then released her fine 2007 solo record The Black And White Album on his label, Ipecac.

Little Jackie – a collaboration between Coppola and producer Adam Pallin – is an unashamedly pop album, a blend of feisty R&B, soul, and funk, although lyrically, it's a cut above most records in a similar vein. Witty and with a strong narrative voice, Coppola is clearly a pretty smart cookie, dropping casually clever rhymes (''It's a typical day in the universe/Another MC spits a puny verse/I try to get through my day without saying curse/Cuz I curse too much, and such and such'' goes single girl's anthem 28 Butts) in a seductive, lightly husky drawl. The should-be-a-hit here is The World Should Revolve Around Me, bright soul-pop garnished with violins, horns and piano and with a chorus that beams like a smile. Elsewhere, Liked You Better’ is a sweetly melodic, slyly barbed break-up song (''I liked you better before you knew me/Didn't smoke cigarettes, you didn't drink coffee'') while Cryin' For The Queen appears to take aim at Amy Winehouse - or some other tottering, car-crash starlet - Coppola singing, ''Sick of your behaviour and your junkie routine/It's time for you to get clean and stop creating a scene' atop an irresistible 60s girl group swing.

Mixing sweetness with sass, The Stoop might just be Coppola's best album to date, and if there's any justice, it'll see her return from the margins to pop's centre stage.