The Streets, 'The Hardest Way to Make an Easy Living' (Vice)

Mike Skinner wrestles with success on a stellar new album.

If you don’t think pop stardom is a total drag, well then, you must not be very famous. Just ask Britney or Lindsay, Michael or Madonna. Now even Mike Skinner has lent his 'umble mumble to this all-star chorus of lamentation.

Anti-Flag, 'For Blood and Empire' (RCA)

Sure, Bush sucks, but a whole CD of "Bush sucks!" gets old fast.

This is what I know about politics from listening to punk-rock bands for the past couple of years: George Bush sucks. I know there’s been some mention of Noam Chomsky and how he thinks we should abort the corrupt government agency known as "the media" and possibly exterminate our failed democracy entirely (let's don’t and say we did). But that’s about it.

Mobb Deep, 'Blood Money' (G-Unit/Interscope)

Off the 'Bridge, thug rap's realists get lost in 50's fast lane.

A funny thing happened on the way to the club: Mobb Deep made it through security. On the strength of last year’s 50 Cent- driven, synth-scintillator "Outta Control (Remix)," Queensbridge’s bards of grisly thug verité finally found their way into the hearts and hips of Pop America.

Boris, 'Pink' (Southern Lord)

Crazy, gorgeous Japanese noise prog.

Let us pause and raise a cup of sizzyrup to the fine people of Japan. Any culture that has given the world Godzilla vs. the Smog Monster, bukkake porn, and coffee-flavored chewing gum clearly has an elegant, refined sense of the brutal and the psychedelic. Boris is an apotheosis of both urges.

Ghostface Killah, 'Fishscale' (Def Jam)

A pusher allegory that proves there's no business like snow business.

Rap about crack cocaine hit big last year, with Young Jeezy and Juelz Santana flooding the streets and the charts. So when Ghostface Killah announced he was releasing an album christened after fishscale, a pure form of Peruvian flake cocaine, trepidation struck.

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