Anthony Miccio

With the president's popularity slipping to uncharted nadirs, the time was finally right for the Dixie Chicks to charge in with an unforgiving, unrepentant anthem that rebukes their censorious critics and doubles as an anthem of pride for anyone else who refuses to buckle...

It's been only two years since DMX's album Grand Champ, 24 months spent dealing with personal and criminal issues that would cripple a weaker person. But from the classic bark and bravado he and Swizz Beatz show here, you wouldn't guess he'd even caught a cold...

"My twelfth album launch! Now everything is carte blanche!" trumpets the Rod Stewart of rap at the launch of his Todd Smith. The single "It's LL and Santana" may be a thunderous collabo with Juelz, but Carlos would have been a wiser guest to intro the five "ooh girl ooh...

This track is brisker than the Yoshimi singles — closer to the spazzy sound of Hit to Death in the Future Head from 1992. Unfortunately the Lips haven't regained their sinister sense of humor, leaving Wayne Coyne's mawkish attempts at deep thought totally insufferable. It's Styx for a sloppier subgenre...

One downside of the mashup is the way it can conflate diametrically opposed musical eras into a glop of mere nostalgia: the Jive Bunny effect. This clumsy combination of 1971 psychedelic apocalypse and 1981 postdisco futurism is an evil, awkward example...