Listen To This

DJ Shadow's The Outsider opens with an unnamed lounge crooner promising, "This time, I'm gonna' try things my way". Then the record plunges into 20+ minutes of Shadow-produced hyphy (San Francisco's answer to crunk) before starkly shifting genres across ten more tracks, making the statement the record's spiritual refrain. It's as if the SoCal dj got fed up with being known as the Jesus Christ of turntablism and decided to make something that wouldn't be expected to result in Radiohead's next great album. In Shadow's defense, he deserves to deliver this risky, uneven, self-indulgent mixtape. He is, after all, as responsible for Okay Computer as Radiohead is. The high moments--such as the crunk-done-right "Seein Thangs" and slow-smoldering "Backstage Girl"--definitely atone for the low ones, like the awful "What Have I Done". The difficulty with The Outsider has less to do with the record or the dj and more to do with the expectations of his fans. There are no OMG moments as on Entroducing or The Private Press. Instead, this is a record that's enjoyable for what it does right and wrong. It's also a record that may have been necessary to give DJ Shadow some much deserved breathing room for the second act of his career.

A nice distraction.

Listen to This

Any music fan knows that most acts inevitably descend into irrelevance. Not Underworld. Like the Chemical Brothers or Spoon, the trio of vocalist Karl Hyde, composer Rick Smith, and DJ Darren Price just resurface every few years and drop electronic masterpieces like still-lit cigarette butts on the back porch. The case is no different with Oblivion With Bells, Underworld's eighth LP in twenty years. Whether it's the epic opening pop-house suite of "Crocodile" and "Beautiful Burnout" or the infectious social-commentary-turned-love-song "Ring Road", Underworld deliver Oblivion With Bells as if they're clocking into a good ass job.

Required.

Listen To This

"You've got to get mad. You've got to say, 'I'm a human being, dammit! My life has value!" implores a voice of discontent midway through Erykah Badu's ostentatiously-titled New Amerykah, Pt. 1: 4th World War. The scream is a culmination of this batch of Badu's songs, which take up the cross of being a person of color in the new millenium. When these issues clash with Badu's roster of A-List hip-hop/soul producers, the result is a record that pays homage to the past while looking forward, both sonically and socially.

Required.

Listen to This

RJD2's Since We Last Spoke is a difficult transitory record between masterworks. What initially sounds like a sleep-inducing trip-hop record evolves through repeat listens into a sound collage of moody sketches driven by understated melodies. It features RJD2's debut on vocals (one song a cover of Labi Siffre), foretelling his move away from instrumental hip-hop into beat-heavy pop.

A nice distraction.