Buena Vista Social Club
"At Carnegie Hall"
(Nonesuch)

Recorded July 1, 1998, a 78-minute double-CD proves how stiff and thin this made-up collective's mysteriously canonical 1997 studio album is. How? By kicking off with and obliterating the same three songs in the same order, then moving on to a less striking rendition of the lead track from the much better "Introducing . . . Ruben Gonzalez." Together for years by then, they're playing off each other and to a crowd  looser, louder, showier, more excited. Yet even so, chief vocalists Ibrahim Ferrer and Omara Portuondo never leap the language barrier the way pianist Gonzalez does, and if this be the last hurrah of genuine Cuban son, what are those Cooders doing in the mix, and those rumba horns? For too long in the middle, it's just pleasurable exotica-next-door. But then the climactic "Candela" goes an extra minute-and-a-half for a reason. And then Ferrer and Portuondo get beautiful.

Chromeo
"Fancy Footwork"
(Vice)

Now repackaged with a free remix disc I'll never play again, this Montreal duo do Daft Punk with simpler, surer hooks and marginally human voices. Dance by genre, they're pop by spiritual affinity, and whaddaya know, they sing in English -- presque pas de français. This matters deeply only on the sweetly revealing "Momma's Boy," but it's reassuring throughout. They love them some girls, and they're so uptempo about it.

Franco
"Francophonic"
(Sterns Africa)

As monumental as, and meatier than, Stern's Rochereau retrospective "The Voice of Lightness," this overview of the big man's first three decades plays less smoothly because smooth was never the idea -- he was John to Rochereau's Paul. The two of them ruled Kinshasa because they were bandleaders on a par with James Brown: shrewd businessmen, charismatic bosses and unrelenting musical conceptualizers. But though Franco helped create the onwards-and-upwards rumba lift that turned their city into the musical capital of pan-Africa, he remained rough and local. His lyrics eschewed romance, his singing favored a declarative midrange, his famed guitar was loud and plangent rather than nimbly lyrical. Where compiler Ken Braun gives us a Rochereau who sheds idiosyncrasy as he defines a genre and masters a personal style, his Franco is always thinking. Even on the later disc, he's masterminding a transcendent commercial and then mourning his younger brother, teasing out a buildup on one song and delivering nonstop climax on the next. Rhythms and tempos shift: here a cha-cha, there a torch song, there some eerie 3/4 time. But he never stints on melody. You may need Braun's notes to get your mind around songs your body has already internalized. Or you may decide to just enjoy how it sounds.

GZA/Genius
"Pro Tools"
(Babygrande)

Never thought I'd say this, but RZA isn't missed -- the budget production enhances a master lyricist's specialty by subtraction. After dispensing with the "horrific torture by prolific authors" upsmanship, he's both factual, as on the doomed "Short Race" and "Path of Destruction," and fanciful, as on "0% Finance"'s renovated terraplane and "Cinema"'s scary movie. RZA re-enters rapping on the farewell "Life Is a Movie," in which a wild script takes off from humble facts but runs into trouble in production.

Homeboy Sandman
"Actual Factual Pterodactyl"
(Boy Sand Industries)

This logorrheic rhymer says he comes music first, which means extended loops from anywhere: speed-rock, roots dancehall, humming and whistling, Bach or somebody, Jon Hassell or somebody, Kenna nailing his Thom Yorke impression. On the one about the ill-fated mambo contest, there's a mambo; on "I-Tunes Song," there's an intrusive jingle. But though the loops have some jam and Kenna will never sound better, what sustains is the words. Some you'll get right away, others you'll let pass with your head spinning. But they'll be there waiting. Conscious enough, Homeboy loves to play, which greatly enhances his wisdom  hear how "Or" arrays 200-odd "or" rhymes: "I am a sight for sore orbs/Flow like a cyborg albacore." Married to this hip-hop for richer or poorer, he's never been divorced. His brand of hip-hop is nothing like yours.

Love Is All
"A Hundred Things Keep Me Up at Night"
(What's Your Rupture)

As intense one of those hummingbirds that consume twice their own weight every day, Josephine Olausson makes being tiny a virtue. She wants it all, which scares her half to death -- her multiple paranoias provide an album title. But tune and tempo conquer all even if love doesn't, and soon, if you listen up, you'll hear her toss her head and move on, jubilant in her capacity for jubilation. Well past thirty now, she's one of those happy punks -- in art and, one hopes, in life.

T.I.
"Paper Trail"
(Grand Hustle/Atlantic)

Determined to provide for his dependents during 2009's scheduled downtime, Atlanta's favorite convicted phenom bids subcultural purism goodbye, augmenting "King"'s steamroller anthems with all the hooks we can eat, putting the words on paper before delivery. After three impressive "What You Want" rips, the third of which exploits moral confusions he would never have copped to when he was king, he buries the hatchet with Ludacris, whose rhymes bury his, but who's keeping score? Then it's on to a "Numa Numa Dance" sample foreshadowing the "Paper Planes" sample to come, an obliging sex boast soon converted by YouTube schoolkids into a get-out-the-vote ditty, a chant about designer headscarves, a walk around the block with Usher and Justin Timberlake. He proves he belongs on the same record as Jay, Wayne, and Kanye by hiring them to rhyme in on "Swagga Like Us," which cleans out the taste of "Every Chance I Get," the only misogynist braggadocio on an album that swaggas as a matter of principle. Hip-hop's amoral guardians may bitch and moan. But if you can't get with this expediently excessive piece of rich-get-richer, commercial rap albums are beyond your ken.