A little-discussed truism of R&B is that female vocalists benefited more from Michael Jackson than male vocalists did, and none more than Karyn White. Only gays and black teenage girls seemed to appreciate White's potential as a revolutionary force in black dance music, someone whose natural gift for melody and a rocker's instincts pushed the mediocre material that characterized late '80s R&B over the top.

White was washed out to sea in the Whitney-Mariah tidal wave that swept through the business in the early '90s, her nervous, totally human vocal gymnastics replaced by a faux gospel passion. Beyonce Knowles, the lead singer and kingpin of Destiny's Child, is closer to White in terms of musical sensibility than any other big-name singer now shaking her scantily clad rump on MTV. But even if she was influenced artistically by White as a child, she grew up in an industry atmosphere that favored the big effect over all other considerations.

The skinny on the street is that the new DC album, "Survivor," is inferior to the last platinum blockbuster, "The Writing's on the Wall," mainly because Beyonce has unleashed her inner control freak (a year ago, two members were replaced, and then one of those replacements quit four months later). On the other hand, the skinny in my apartment is that the first three cuts on the new album have been playing pretty much nonstop for the past two months.

The rest of the album, I don't have time for; not so much because the tunes and the production don't make the grade but because I can't put up with Beyonce's I-am-woman-hear-me-roar rhetoric unless the tunes and production make up for it. "Nasty Girl" isn't ironic, just hypocritical. "The Story of Beauty," which pretends to deal forthrightly with sex abuse, is obvious and superficial. The street would say that Missy, She'kspere, Kandi and all the other high-rent collaborators made "Writing" a great album because they checked Ms. Knowles' latent diva tendencies.

After seeing DC's long-awaited and twice-postponed Tokyo debut at Shibuya AX on June 25, I think I agree with the street. Though there was never any illusion that this wasn't an industry showcase -- four dancers, three costume changes, one set list chiseled in stone, no musicians, all contained in one perfect hour -- the fact that the public was invited to spend hard-earned yen for the opportunity to get up-close-and-personal with DC and their underextended mojo proved that divadom don't mean nothin' if you can't take advantage of it.

Beyonce, Kelly and Michelle hit all the right notes and demonstrated that, high heels and micro-minis notwithstanding, they could sashay to beat the nonexistent band. The sold-out auditorium maintained a steady roar of approval without prompting, which made said prompting (by the whitest-sounding MC I've ever heard at an R&B show) seem even more ridiculous and redundant.

The crummy sound didn't wreck the songs, but it certainly says something about the concert's priorities that the best performance of the evening was "Bootylicious," which, because it depends so much on overdubbed choruses, didn't need a whole lot of live input from the three lovelies. When the girls did get to show off their considerable chops it was on a lame Lionel Richie ballad (the kind of song that White was an antidote to) and a gratuitous "a cappella gospel medley" that was over before you could say "Hallelujah."

"We're playing again here in October," Beyonce told the crowd, "with a bigger and better show, and I want every single one of y'all to come back." Though it wasn't exactly an order, Beyonce seems like the kind of woman who gets what she wants. (And then dismisses her power by saying it's all God's will.) When she said put your hands in the air, we did. When she said scream, we screamed. When she said sing along, we tried, God bless our hearts, but it was hard.

"You know the words to this one," she directed, and everyone in the place did know the words to "Bills, Bills, Bills," because they're great words, but with the stuttery beat and the machinegun delivery, one couldn't help but think she was being either naive or cruel.

The perfunctory encore was more to the point. "Independent Woman Part 1" provides both a doable singalong chorus and a proper opportunity to wave your hands in the air because that's what the song says to do. "All you honeys makin' money, throw your hands up." Capitalists all, honey and nonhoney alike, we testified to that higher purpose.