A cracklingly sharp bit of 80s pop from Company B – a trio of female singers who get some great help throughout from legendary Miami club producer Ish – an artist you might know for his famous contributions to Foxy, Oxo, and a range of other earlier projects! Ish has definitely updated his groove from the TK disco years – going more for a Miami club vibe from the hi energy years – lots of fast beats and catchy keyboards next to the vocals of the trio, who often trade leads throughout the set. Titles include the big hit "Fascinated", plus "Full Circle", "Jam On Me", "Signed In Your Book Of Love", "Perfect Lover", "Spin Me Round", and "Infatuate Me". CD features bonus tracks – "Full Circle (club)", "Perfect Lover (vocal club)", "Fascinated (club)", "Full Circle (sax & dog house mix)", and "Signed In Your Book Of Love (street mix)". CD

Madly tripped out guitar funk – and a real turning point in the career of guitarist Eddie Fisher! Eddie began his career as a straighter guitarist on the St Louis scene – and although his first album for Cadet was a relatively traditional soul-jazz outing, this one's a wild batch of tripped-out guitar licks! The band's a fuzzy psychedelic one – not in a rock-styled way, but more in an early George Clinton kind of mode, with plenty of rumbling bass at the bottom, warm electric piano lines, nicely placed drum beats, and Eddie's fuzzbox guitar snaking and wah wah-ing over the top! Eddie arranged and produced, and the record's a perfect batch of kicked-back stoner funk numbers that go on and on and on and on! Titles include "Land Of Our Father", "Beautiful Things", "East St Louis Blues", "Another Episode", "Either Or", and "Jeremiah Pucket". LP, Vinyl record album

Just when you thought Prince Paul and Cat Power would never make a record together PRESTO – it's the new Handsome Boy album! HBMS takes a bit more of a chillout tack with this long overdue second opus – with lots of laidback beats and samples, and a surprising amount of live instrumentation! The gleeful, sarcastic comedy of the stellar first album remains intact, with some genuinely amusing skits (including one with Jay Z appearing under the pseudonym Hines Buchanan), and the deep range of guest vocalists isn't as surprising as how strong their work is in the best tunes. It would have been pretty easy for Prince Paul and Automator to find a bunch of interesting names to flesh out their big pop culture frappe, but something else altogether to make trippy hip hop tracks featuring Cat Power and the Hieroglyphics make sense on the same record. A pretty solid set from the most adventurous pseudo duo in the game! Guests include Del The Funky Homosapien, De La Soul, RZA, Lord Finesse, AG, Rahzel, Jazzy Jay, Qbert, Mike Patton, Casual, Hieroglyphics, Grand Wizard Theodore, El-P, John Oates, Pharrell, Kid Koala, and George W. Bush (just kidding). Tracks include "If It Wasn't For You" with De La, "Are You Down With It" with Mike Patton, "The World's Gone Mad" with Del and others, "It's Like That" with Casual, "I've Been Thinking" with Cat Power, "Rock And Roll (Could Never Hip Hop Like This) Pt 2" featuring Lord Finesse, Qbert and others,"First. . .And Then" featuring Dres from Black Sheep, "A Day In The Life" featuring RZA, AZ and others and more, plus intro/outro by Father Guido Sarducci. LP, Vinyl record album

Ok so she's got a Grammy – but that makes us love her even more! Jill Scott is one of the greatest soul artists to emerge in the past decade – and this second album avoids the usual "sophomore slump" by showing a whole new side of her talents! Disc one is a great live set – showing that Jill's organic talent isn't the product of studio trickery, and can conjure up as much warmth in person as it can on disc. The backing is tight, jazzy, and with a different finish than you might be accustomed to from Jill's first LP – less hip hop beats and more real funk drumming, a fuller group instrumental sound with lots of nice solos, and over it all, incredible vocals from Jill! The set's got smoking live versions of "One Is The Magic #", "A Long Walk", "Love Rain", "Getting In The Way", "Fatback Taffy", "He Loves Me", and "Do You Remember". CD

Trumpeter Louis Smith made only two records for Blue Note, but both of them are great! This set's arguably his most famous – because of a rare uncredited appearance by Cannonball Adderley, working here under the "nom de date" of "Buckshot La Funke" – and blowing with a power that beats most of his other Mercury sessions of the late 50s! But the real credit here should go to Louis Smith – who's got a sense of power and command that should have made him one of THE trumpeters of the 50s – an emerging young talent to stand alongside Lee Morgan, Nat Adderley, and other post-Fats Navarro/Clifford Brown talents on the instrument. Smith sparkles throughout with a mix of soul and modernism we really love – and an earthy way of blowing the horn that doesn't always reach its goals, but which draws even more energy from its ability to try! The rhythm section on the album's also very tight – with Art Taylor on drums, Doug Watkins on bass, and either Tommy Flanagan or Duke Jordan on piano – and tracks include "Ande", "Brill's Blues", "South Side", and "Val's Blues". CD

Trumpeter Louis Smith made only two records for Blue Note, but both of them are great! This set's arguably his most famous – because of a rare uncredited appearance by Cannonball Adderley, working here under the "nom de date" of "Buckshot La Funke" – and blowing with a power that beats most of his other Mercury sessions of the late 50s! But the real credit here should go to Louis Smith – who's got a sense of power and command that should have made him one of THE trumpeters of the 50s – an emerging young talent to stand alongside Lee Morgan, Nat Adderley, and other post-Fats Navarro/Clifford Brown talents on the instrument. Smith sparkles throughout with a mix of soul and modernism we really love – and an earthy way of blowing the horn that doesn't always reach its goals, but which draws even more energy from its ability to try! The rhythm section on the album's also very tight – with Art Taylor on drums, Doug Watkins on bass, and either Tommy Flanagan or Duke Jordan on piano – and tracks include "Ande", "Brill's Blues", "South Side", and "Val's Blues". CD

The highly anticipated solo album from Def Jux CEO and Company Flow vet El-Producto is all that and a bucket of black hole warp speed 9 intensity. Excellent, dark, space age, new millennial hip hop.. This album flows from many songs without breaks between them, with jagged, scattered beats and lush synth-scapes. At points it sounds very cinematic, yet very grounded in thick, pounding break beats. The whole thing is produced by El-P himself, with Rhyme Sayer Entertainment's DJ Abilities on all the scratching, with many Def Jux guests like Aesop, Lif, CamuTao, and Vast. Ill Bill, C Rayz Walz, Rob Sonic, and Cage also make appearances. Songs include "Deep Space 9mm" with the raw Rawkus dis, "Tuned Mass Damper" with awesome scream samples, "Dead Disnee", "Delorean", the biting "Stepfather Factory", "Lazerfaces' Warning", "Constellation Funk" and more! 3LPs! LP, Vinyl record album