Houston has done her time as an inspirational singer with hits like "The Greatest Love of All," melding gospel and show-tune crescendos. "When You Believe" relies on the same mechanisms, with Irish uileann pipes for post-"Titanic" tear-jerking.

As they trade verses, Houston sounds supple and devout, while Carey fidgets with every phrase. Houston used to be similarly showy and disjointed, but now her improvisations bring emotional coherence to technical feats.

"When You Believe" is not the centerpiece of "My Love Is Your Love," an album more concerned with earthly love than with divine faith. It is also the album on which Houston, 35, finally comes to terms with 90's rhythm-and-blues. While singers in their teens and 20's have merged Houston's melismatic fervor with brittle hip-hop rhythms, she has been sticking to ballads and gospel. But she had little to fear from computerized rhythms and hip-hop realism.

Instead of Houston's old vows of endless romance, her new material heads for the romantic trenches, fighting to hold on to a straying man and, if not him, her self-respect. Unlike some divas, she wants to play down any connections between her life and her songs.

Her marriage to the singer Bobby Brown has generated tabloid headlines, but she has insisted that they are happy together. Lest anyone draw other conclusions from the songs, the album carries a disclaimer: "The events and characters depicted in this album are fictitious."

For much of the album, Houston sings to a man who has been ignoring her and cheating on her. In the first song, "It's Not Right but It's Okay," she throws the man out after detailing evidence from credit-card receipts and Caller ID.

The songwriter and producer Rodney Jerkins (who produced "The Boy Is Mine" for Brandy and Monica) sets up tense, intricately ricocheting keyboard plinks and a twitchy electronic beat; her fury rises in endlessly inventive bursts of syncopation.

The album enlists other hip-hop luminaries. Wyclef Jean of the Fugees provides a lean reggae groove for "My Love Is Your Love," as Houston sings with easy confidence about a love that would survive homelessness, World War III and Judgment Day.

Another Fugee, Lauryn Hill, strips Stevie Wonder's "I Was Made to Love Her" to two chords and lots of gutsy heys and whoo-hoos. Missy Elliott also wrote and produced two songs, but her melodies and production hem in Houston's singing.

Hedging its bets, the album also includes more old-fashioned ballads that sound stodgy and bombastic next to the brisk percolations of the hip-hoppers. Houston does better in "Heartbreak Hotel," a ballad (not the Elvis Presley hit) reminiscent of George Michael's "Careless Whispers." With guest vocals by two of Houston's disciples, Faith Evans and Kelly Price, the song becomes Everywoman's farewell to lying men.