Common

Electric Circus

MCA

Is rapper Common neo-soul, acid jazz or Native Tongues? When you can’t categorize a sound, you can’t limit its possibilities—something Common apparently understands and capitalizes upon in Electric Circus. Last year’s amazing albums from The Roots, Talib Kweli and Cody Chesnutt proved the place of electronica and the electric guitar in the music of this new hip-hop movement. But Common’s new album delivers the exclamation point on an already strong declaration. In “New Wave,” Laetitia Sadier of Stereolab delivers a stunning vocal hook as Common declares his independence from the music industry. Meanwhile, “Jimi was a Rock Star” serves as a nod to the album’s most obvious musical influence, as well as a showcase for Common’s lyrical abilities.

In other songs, Common addresses deeply personal issues ranging from insecurity and death to his own rumored homophobia. Though albums about artists’ vulnerability often risk sounding trite, Electric Circus never delivers the easy answers to fundamental questions. In “Right Ta” Common asks, “Hip-hop is changin’/Y’all want me to stay the same?” With this album, Common shows that he has already changed since 2000’s Like Water for Chocolate, and will likely continue to break boundaries. —Brian D. Goldstein

Hot Hot Heat

Make Up The Breakdown

Sub Pop

A Canadian band that the land of maple leaves can be proud to call her own is finally crossing the border. Stylish Hot Hot Heat create and innovate masterfully while sporting skintight pants and boyish smiles. Dress finesse aside, the four lanky British Columbians produce great music all over Make Up The Breakdown, their first full-length album with major label Sub Pop, best known as the birthplace of Nirvana. Mixing rhythmic drive with some of the catchiest hooks around, Hot Hot Heat belt out a unique brand of rock so irresistibly fun and spastic that bodies demand to twist and jive along with it. This is dance music for punk rockers.

No weak or uninteresting tracks are found on the album; they’re all good. On the particularly outstanding “Bandages,” singer/keyboardist Steve Bays leads the melody with one of the best uses of keyboard in recent rock while his pointed voice jostles the listener through whirling, biting images of aimless wandering and voodoo dolls.

Rock songs lamenting frustrations with place and identity and the double-edged sword of love have never been this danceable and uplifting. Make Up the Breakdown is the sort of album one can listen through in its entirety without ever skipping a song. Have no fear that the ride ends after a brisk 32 minutes—simply press “play” once again. —Sarah L. Solorzano

Missy Elliott

Under Construction

Elektra Records

Missy and Timbaland are one of hip-hop’s great duos, a point driven home by the confident pose the two strike together inside their new album. Each record they craft signals another paradigm shift in mainstream hip-hop. But for once, the ante’s been upped on them—the Neptunes now own this hip-hop game, and their effect via the breathtaking “Grindin” on Under Construction is clear.

Fortunately, Timbaland rises to the challenge with some of his most potent work to date. Looking to old-school predecessors for inspiration, he ditches his trademark angular stutter-step to anchor the beats in thunderous boom-bap, charging them with a newfound immediacy. The low-end artillery in “Funky Fresh Dressed” sounds made for a gargantuan boom box, and “Slide’s” ominous boom reels in the body like a black hole. Though technology coats the beats in platinum, the classic hip-hop samples laced throughout the album lend them a welcome mustiness.

Meanwhile, Missy’s inimitable vocal science is perfected, sounding more comfortable and justified than ever. In the masterpiece “Work It,” she renounces any pretense at literary substance in favor of infantile rhymes (“keep your eyes on my babumpabump-bump / and think you can handle this gadonkadonk-donk?”) that realize the joy of pure lyrical play and make the song’s ill bump’n’groove all the more infectious. “Meaning” is baggage in music that’s meant to be felt first, as Under Construction’s intensely visceral buzzing, booming songs prove. Conversely, this uplifting and masterfully executed album probably means more for hip-hop than any other release in recent memory. —Ryan J. Kuo