Hip Hop/Rap

Def Jam The Roots have released “Rising Down,” another progressively styled sampling of mastery from Philadelphia’s hip-hop purveyors. Less explosive than 2006’s fiery “Game Theory,” “Rising Down” utilizes new sounds and textures and fatalistic lyrics for an abrasive, often industrial rap grind that manages to be political lyrically, without being overtly charged. Both “Singing Man” […]

  TVT The most amazing thing about “Crunk Hits Vol. 4” is not that they managed to find more than a dozen “crunk hits” for a record, but that they have managed to do so on at least four occasions.   If you aren’t familiar with the crunk genre, just think bouncy club music with […]

  TVT   Watch out! It’s the Pitbull’ the Cuban-American rapper with neither bark, bite nor any knack for songwriting.   “The Boatlift” is an insufferable, 18-track CD from the Miami hip-hop disaster. Tackling modern dilemmas like chicks on MySpace, Pitbull sinks his fangs into “Go Girl,” a song that features the always awful Trina, […]

that song, I didn’t even know what “Atlanta” was, but thanks to Dupri, it’s clear: Atlanta is where the “playas play.”   Dupri also wants to remind us that he has a lot of money, and included “Money Ain’t a Thang,” song that he recorded with Jay-Z in 1998. If money ain’t a thang, why […]

  Universal Hey, guess what? Just because you can flip enough knobs in a studio to make beats for other hip-hop artists doesn’t mean you can or need to make an album of your own.   But New York producer, beat-maker and studio guru Swizz Beats didn’t learn from his 2002 mistake “Presents G.H.E.T.T.O. Stories,” […]

GeffenCommon’s latest release, “Finding Forever,” is a pretty bland collection of soulful hip-hop tracks that makes you wish Common, who earned four 2006 Grammy nominations for his album “Be,” would release something a little less common and a little more interesting. To his credit, the Chicago hip-hop native’s voice doesn’t sound like anyone else, but […]

onal Pt. 3,” even he’s not so sure, relying on guest stars (Kanye West, Snoop Dogg, Nas, et al.) for each of his album’s 18 tracks. This head-on collision of identity yields a real crisis: one of adhesion. There’s a lot of anger brewing here, but the tracks render much of it superficial. Numbers meant […]

Def Jam Scattered Wu-Tang Clan projects are better than none at all. Ghostface Killah’s “Fishscale” was one of 2006’s more accomplished rap records, competing perhaps only with Rhymefest’s “Blue Collar” for the crown of year’s best. Squeaking in at the end of the year, “More Fish” continues the bracing brilliance of “Fishscale,” a paranoid, poetic […]

Zomba It’s been four years since siblings Pusha-T and Malice’ collectively known as Clipse’ dropped “Lord Willin’,” a mind-blowing collaboration with the then-lesser-known production team The Neptunes. A endless series of legal disputes have kept the duo’s sophomore release, “Hell Hath No Fury,” from seeing the light of day, but at last, these irreverent, futuristic […]

Def Jam So much ink has been spilled about Jay-Z’s “comeback” that you’d be forgiven if you spin “Kingdom Come” expecting a blinding light of salvation to explode from your speakers. Breathless music writers nearly lost their collective mind when Jigga announced that his retirement (“casual hiatus” might be more accurate) was over and he […]