In his native Brazil, where he's a product of the notoriously brutal favelas (shanty-town slums). Seu Jorge is already a superstar. In the U.S., though he regularly appears to so!d-out crowds, he's still best known as an Americans are more likely to recognize his face from films like City of God and The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (for which he also memorably interpreted a number of David Bowie songs in Portuguese) than identify his voice with one of his songs. His new album, the remarkable Cru ("crude" or "raw"), may change all that. Drawing on the samba tradition but soaked in a perfectly laid-back, bare- bones style that precisely fits his calming, deliberative voice. Cru shines on almost every track, from the autobiographical "En Sou Favela" to the Serge Gainsbourg cover "Chatterton" to the quasi-novelty number "Mania de Peitao," It's terrific end-of-summer listening, cool as a tropical smoothie.