Brass Knuckles is Nelly’s Thriller. No kidding. It’s not perfect, but neither was MJ’s magnum opus; it jumped styles and was not particularly cohesive. Likewise, Knuckles skips haphazardly from Dirty South jams to G-funk throwbacks to would-be empowerment anthems. It’s more of a collection of singles than an actual album…

Rappers and producers who appear on the Game’s third album, LAX, include…everybody. There’s Kanye West, Scott Storch, Travis Barker, Keisha Cole and Ne-Yo, for starters, and Game says he recorded over 220 tracks for the CD. But with the exception of two admittedly lights-out bangers, “My Life” and “Dope Boys,”…

Wale might seem like the kind of rapper only a blogger could love, but music-industry titan Jimmy Iovine’s betting he can move units to the masses. His recent signing with Iovine’s Interscope Records has been the culmination of a startlingly rapid ascent for the Washington, D.C., rapper, who, after catching…

Most everything you need to know about horny, go-getting Los Angeles newcomer Shwayze can be gleaned from lines like this one from “Polaroid”: “Woke up with a semi-hard dick/In a fat chick/Three this week/Call that a hat trick.” Yeah, it’s that bad. Oddly, though, the partly sung, partly rapped tracks…

Last year, Black Kids released a blogosphere-revered EP full of electro-tinged dance songs addressing themes of incest and gender ambiguity. The Jacksonville quintet’s full-length debut Partie Traumatic contains the entire EP and six more songs continuing in the same, party-starting-then-party-fouling vein. Nearly all the tracks boast immediately accessible progressions and…

On Untitled, Nas is clearly hoping that by name-dropping big issues (reparations, single motherhood, media control) and dazzling you with his acrobatic flow (“I’m over they heads/Like a bulimic on a see-saw”), you’ll gloss over the fact that he’s not saying anything coherent. When he simultaneously decries poverty and glorifies…

At least on Usher’s last album, Confessions, he was being honest. He was essentially admitting to being a cheating scumbag, and that’s what made it interesting. But his followup, Here I Stand, finds him a married father, and he admits to little more than cyber-cruising. “I’m chatting, this ain’t cheating,…

N.E.R.D.’s third album is the compact-disc equivalent of an ad campaign trying to appeal to the Red Bull/BlackBerry generation. “We gotta make it passionate,” you can almost hear Pharrell telling the guys in the studio. “And retro. And political. You know, some really fucked-up crazy awesome nuts shit!” And so…

Destined to be a stoner classic, Tha Carter III should silence critics who think Lil Wayne can’t make a cohesive album. III is pop rap to giggle to and marvel at, from “Phone Home,” where Wayne gives his outer-space shtick the full treatment, to “Misunderstood,” in which he disses Al…

Husband-and-wife team Jason Hammel and Kori Gardner seemingly make gorgeous indie-pop songs as casually as the rest of us shower in the morning. Much has changed since they released their 2006 debut on Barsuk, Bring It Back; they’ve moved to New York and had another daughter, for starters. But Re-Arrange…

Despite not having much formal education, White Rabbits bassist Adam Russell has long led a literary lifestyle. He dropped out of high school at sixteen because he was frustrated with teachers who regularly kicked him out of class for reading stuff like Moby-Dick, physics texts and Nietzsche when he was…

Naturally, Foxy Brown is the object of Ali G’s affections. With her foul mouth and short skirt, she epitomizes the fake gangsta-ism he parodies. At least she has the track record to support it: She recently finished a stint at Riker’s Island, having violated probation stemming from an attack on…

On one hand, it shouldn’t be surprising that rapper Slug is insecure, considering he’s got one song called “They’re All Gonna Laugh @ You” and another that tells the fantastical story of a woman who would rather have sex with her own tattoos than with him. Still, as one half…

Narrow Stairs sounds just like Plans, right down to the obvious production, weepy lyrics and inoffensive guitar, continuing Death Cab’s tradition of aping Morrissey lyrics without Moz’s counterintuitive turns of phrase or dark jokes. Songs like “Long Division” seem the product of some sort of indie-rock nerd-crafted lyric generator: “And…

The characters given life by Slug on Atmosphere’s new album have unenviable situations, but they’re not all painting that shit gold (whatever that means). Vagrants, single parents and dope-addled fiends, they all work, fuck and wallow in their misery, giving the emotional indie rapper a chance to traffic in someone…

We expect a lot from our crossover pop stars nowadays, even from a duo as inspired as Gnarls Barkley, aka DJ Danger Mouse, and Cee-Lo Green. We expect guilt-free-yet-radio-worthy earworms like “Crazy,” not to mention genuine pathos, both of which the act somehow managed to deliver on its debut, St…

With Hüsker Dü and Sugar, Bob Mould blanketed bleak tales of relationship woes with layers of electric guitar and driving choruses. On later releases, he turned his attention to electronic music. Although remnants of that era linger on District Line, it mainly follows the playbook of his last CD, Body…

True to its title, the latest album from Stephin Merritt’s long-running prickly pop project the Magnetic Fields is full of feedback and reverb. While it might seem that such sonic intrusion would disrupt these carefully crafted tunes, that’s not the case. In fact, Distortion is as pretty, melodic and fully…

Last year, the sales of hip-hop albums dropped 30 percent, a figure that includes digital downloads. But going by recent rap lyrics, you’d think the average MC was too rich to stand up. Literally. Fat Joe’s latest single, “The Crackhouse,” begins, “I’m sleeping on a billion dollars.” Bear in mind…

Though some believe Lupe Fiasco is too smart for mainstream rap, that’s not exactly true. Most of the lyrics on his second release are trite, right down to the CD’s opening monologue: “They thought it was cool to tear down the projects and put up million-dollar condos, gentrification. They think…

Wu-Tang Clan’s fifth album, 8 Diagrams, comes at a time of group strife. Raekwon has called Wu ringleader and beatmaker RZA a “hip-hop hippie” and says the beats on the new album are too cerebral. And it’s true: While the minimalist production and movie samples evoke Enter the Wu-Tang (36…

Mike Relm is single-handedly introducing turntablism to parts of middle America on his second stint with Blue Man Group, opening its current production, How to Be a Megastar Tour 2.1. With between 7,000 and 12,000 people at each show, it’s the San Franciscan’s biggest gig. He’s already a YouTube celebrity…