Ladies: Beware the smooth-talking rap playboys of Slum Village. Sure, they rhyme about long chats over green tea, giving you massages, scattering rose petals from the door to your bed and Champagne on the nightstand. They enlist Dwele's baby-bottom smooth, sensitive R 'n' B vocals and conjure up such a Barry White "Baby, make love to you" vibe that you feel like an embarrassed teenager.

But then they have to go and bring their friends around. Next thing you know, Ol' Dirty Bastard's alter-ego Dirt McGirt has flipped the mood to "If you're flexible, intellectual, bisexual / Can I get next to you?" And Kanye West is dropping disappointments like, "I spotted her like Spuds McKenzie / And for them fake boobies I paid them benjis."

It's enough to confuse a girl — who are these guys? But it's not you; it's them. This is all part of an ongoing Slum Village identity crisis. The Detroit hip-hop outfit has had a tough few years; in fact, the boys have only just learned to make their lineup stick from one release to the next.

The revolving door lurched into action when rapper/producer Jay Dee, whose heavy beats were widely regarded as the group's musical backbone, left his colleagues T3 and Baatin after the group's first successful above-ground album Fantastic, Volume 2 dropped in 2000. Murmurs about banal rhymes and the record only being worthy for Jay Dee's production probably influenced his decision to kick off a solo career.

Rhymer Elzhi stepped things up a lyrical notch when he jumped into the mix a couple years later for Trinity (Past Present and Future). But the album still flopped on the production front, and lost the group a large portion of its following. Just when it looked like things couldn't get any worse, Baatin started acting a little crazy on the tour bus. Soon thereafter, he was diagnosed as schizophrenic and pulled out of the game.

That brought the ranks down to just T3 and Elzhi for the 2004 release of Detroit Deli, an album that made heavy use of guest appearances to fill in the gaps. Slum's first big commercial hit, "Selfish," featuring rising stars Kanye West and crooner John Legend, kept the group's name alive, if not hyped.

Nowadays Slum Village is struggling to solidify its lineup and legacy, marking the final round of evolution with a self-titled album released in late 2005. Detroit brother Dwele keeps the smoothness intact on "Call Me," and Young RJ and B.R. Gunna make a good effort on production throughout. But this is another album lacking in the hard-vibrating groove Jay Dee used to bring.