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CHOICE CUTS

Noiseshaper
"Sly & Robbie -- Vice Vanity," "Me Done" ("Real to Reel" [Miracle Sounds])

Gilberto Gil
"Questão de Ordem," "Luta Contra a Lata Ou a Falência Do Café"

Caetano Veloso
"Soy Loco Por Ti, America"

Gal Costa and Jards Macalé
"The Empty Boat" ("Tropicalia: A Revolutionary Movement of Sound" [Universa])

Mickey Avalon
"My D**k" ("Mickey Avalon" [Interscope])

Me'Shell NdegéOcello
"Article 3" ("The World Has Made Me the Man of My Dreams," [EmArcy])

Tim McGraw
"I'm Workin'" ("Let It Go" [Curb])

Theory Hazit
"Lesson in Power," "Dumb Dunces" ("Extra Credit" [Superrappin])

Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings
"100 Days, 100 Nights" ("100 Days, 100 Nights" [Daptone])

DUD OF THE MONTH

50 Cent
"Curtis"
(Interscope)

The first giveaway is a lie no less bold-faced with his Connecticut mansion on the trading block: "I ain't fresh out the hood, I still in the hood." The second is a truth all too revealing of the lost urgency of his aesthetic motivation: "I ain't even gotta rap now, life is made." What the two boil down to is that a parvenu mastering pop music for money has turned into a made man running on vanity. I find that this renders his expert trivialization of murder and such rather less piquant, and I think he does too -- that an audacious formal delight has become routine. And though his sex talk retains some charm, Eminem's gross-out cameo casts a pall. Is Slim trying to one-up R. Kelly or just his D12 doxy Bizarre?

MORE DUDS

Aesop Rock
"None Shall Pass" (Definitive Jux)

Lyle Lovett and His Large Band
"It's Not Big It's Large" (Lost Highway)

Panda Bear
"Person Pitch" (Paw Tracks)

Grace Potter and the Nocturnals
"This Is Somewhere" (Hollywood)

Carla Thomas
"Live at the Bohemian Caverns" (Stax)

UGK
"Underground Kingz" (UGK/Jive/Zomba)

Wax Tailor
"Tales of Forgotten Melodies" (Decon)

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