1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

Login or Register to rate this item.

Once upon a time, back when the Kingdom of the East was at war with the Kingdom of the West, Lil' Kim, Princess of Brooklyn, proclaimed herself Queen Bitch. Hard Core, her 1996 debut, updated Roxanne Shanté's scabrous The Bitch Is Back for a hip-hop community groping toward a new synthesis of grime and glamour.

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

Login or Register to rate this item.

In 2001, singer Darius "Don't Call Me Hootie" Rucker went to the moon. Leaving the echt dad-rock of his once-multiplatinum Blowfish behind, he recorded an R&B solo album called The Return of Mongo Slade, which was eventually de-weirded and released on an indie label with the far-less-advanced title Back to Then.

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

Login or Register to rate this item.

It started out as a feeling, and now it sounds like a fact: Bands don't have to age badly. Even the Go-Betweens' young 1981 rock sounded, if not old, then happy to spend the night at home with a good chair. Main songwriters Grant McLennan and Robert Forster, both 45, sound younger now that they've brought their band back from deep freeze.

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

Login or Register to rate this item.

Old enough to know better but young enough not to care, England's Ms. Dynamite sells a throwback idea on her sprightly debut album: message-driven soul music. Although hip-hop still breaks out the soapbox on occasion, mainstream R&B singers haven't paid much attention to affairs outside the bedroom since the funk era. Dynamite started out in the U.K.

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

Login or Register to rate this item.

Thanks to recent advances in technology, irony, and unemployment, that scrawny English major with the laptop sitting behind you in the coffeehouse may be working on a hot breakbeat, not the Great American Novel (or his résumé).

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

Login or Register to rate this item.

The White Stripes' Elephant is not a good record. It seems like one for the first eight songs, but then you get to a song called "The Hardest Button to Button." This is when you realize that Elephant is, in fact, a remarkably good record, quite possibly a great record, and certainly the sexiest divorce-rock album since Liz Phair's Exile in Guyville.