Music

Ursula Rucker’s world is rarely an easy place to visit. Her words are fierce, her imagery is overwhelming (wrap your head around the synesthesia of “his voice comes in my hair”), but her third album, Ma’at Mama, is mostly difficult because it’s such a surreal trip. Rucker’s work is precisely…

RJD2’s two-track production cameo on Aceyalone’s 2003 album Love & Hate stood among that disc’s high points. Fans have plenty of reason to be geeked for a full-length collab. But while Magnificent City’s peaks are as good as expected — the Carter-admin gloss-funk of “Fire,” and the gritty Hammond B-3…

F.M. Cornog, a.k.a. East River Pipe, abolishes indie rock clichés by approaching them head-on. He writes coherent lyrics and refuses to make them inaudible; he sings about the downtrodden and depressed without reducing his voice to a gravelly drawl; and his music manages to be introspective without resembling an ugly…

Chan Marshall, a.k.a. Cat Power, is indie rock’s homespun gadfly — a mopey bundle of disconsolate lullabies whose uneven live performances threaten to eclipse her quiet genius. Cat Power’s seventh album, The Greatest, offers something beyond the cavernous longing her fans have come to expect. This time Marshall teams up…

T-Pain wants to know what love is, and he wants you to show him, preferably ass first. Mike Jones wants it too, so let’s hope you’re down with a three-way or have an adequately pole-knowledgeable friend. Add a touch of vocoder and this may actually pass for salable sensitivity in…

In countless interviews, Yoni Wolf insists that despite his hip-hop roots, Why? isn’t mired in that tradition. “Dumb Hummer” — its Willy Wonkian, seraphim-heralding layers of ivory, keyboards, guitar jangle, and bicycle bells positively Fiery Furnaces in construction — draws a line in the sand between his band and its…

A prequel to “Slow Motion,” “Rodeo” features winding and grinding on the dance floor rather than in bed. Because it’s not actually being rapped from a midcoital perspective, it’s not quite as memorable, though Juvenile is still “ballerific” enough to get away with coughing in the first verse…

With a versatile vocal range, rippling guitar solos, and hints of Colombia’s folkloric music, Juanes combines the shimmering epic underpinnings of U2 and the hard-driving metal of Metallica with more traditional Colombian sounds. It is an approach that not only has made Juanes the biggest star in his native Colombia,…

It just doesn’t seem … possible … that Ministry is nominated for a Grammy (Best Metal Performance on “The Great Satan” from 2005’s compilation disc Rantology). Surely if Alain Jourgensen were already in the grave he has spent so many years spooning the dirt for, he’d be spinning in it,…

Audio Bullys are two British producers who sing and rap over garage house and hip-hop tracks. Sometimes on Generation, the group’s proper album, that description sounds exactly as you’d imagine, with Simon Franks delivering the hook (like in “I Won’t Let You Down”) over a kinetic beat. In contrast, “Shot…

Cover albums are generally the province of self-indulgence and creative ennui, wherein the revisionists attempt to relive a childhood fantasy or merely leech off other people’s ideas because they have nothing of import to say. The Bold and the Brave — the recent collaboration between gloomy alt-rockster Will Oldham (under…

Firewater is billed as the fifth and final release by the Alkaholiks, a group that has, despite issuing several good albums, never achieved critical mass outside its California fan base. You wouldn’t know this from the group’s music, however, since the trio — Tash, J-Ro, and producer E-Swift — rarely…

In 2005 jazz’s vault diggers unearthed several gems, including rediscovered live recordings by the Thelonious Monk Quartet with John Coltrane, Coltrane’s classic quartet, and Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker. While those recordings may be more celebrated by the insular jazz critic establishment, there’s little doubt that Miles Davis’s The Cellar…

Tired of being a one-man band, Four Tet’s Kieran Hebden has been heavy into collaborations as of late. Here are his recent sessions with dusty-fingered jazz drummer Steve Reid, and his recasting of “A Joy.” The frenetic lead-off track from last year’s Everything’s Ecstatic now sports hip-hop-quotable Eighties microphone legend…

Acoustic indie-rock plaints of this nature are a dime a dozen, yearning, spare, and incidentally pedestrian. Like Downey’s other lovesick inanities, “Flame Out Flyboy” almost begs for grit and gravitas — amniotic no-fi, sullen vocals, bleeding amps — the stranded-in-a-cave style Robert Pollard adopted for those late-Nineties solo masterpieces that…

For the first time in either’s career, LL and J.Lo seem aware of their limitations and expiring pop appeal. On “Control Myself,” LL does a PG-13-rated sex thang, mimicking the flow of Tone Loc’s “Wild Thing.” J.Lo, meanwhile, simply (and wonderfully) coos in the background. Producer Jermaine Dupri ensures understatement…