Shaolin vs. Wu-Tang, his fifth solo album, is dope.

Strange Clouds isn't perhaps as thrilling as Adventures, mostly because the thrill of the unknown is gone, but B.o.B.'s second album is superior in almost every respect.

In many ways Long.Live.A$AP is an album of the present.

Ultimately, these songs and all of the songs on the album are stories, and to call Macklemore a storytelling rapper would be an understatement. He only tells stories, most often his own, it just turns out he's the kind of gifted storyteller that can keep you listening.

There aren't many singers who have both the vocal ability and range of delivery to traverse a musical landscape that vast, but Brown does it all while impressively managing to maintain a real cohesion throughout X.

These are the songs that don’t initially blow you away, but you find yourself coming back to months later.

While other artists have struggled to contain both their lofty ambitions and animal instincts on the same album (see also, David Banner), and while it does have its low points and high points, Pl3dge sounds remarkably cohesive.

There's no doubt about it, there's greatness lurking in Game, and in R.E.D. Album. Let's just hope that from here on out he'll find the consistency he needs to truly claim that greatness.

With Joe’s distinct style steering every track, No Love Lost is a much more cohesive and focused work, despite similar fluctuations [to Slaughterhouse's Welcome To: Our House].

6's & 7's is a hard album to deliver a final verdict. It's an album that was made for a very specific group, everyone else be damned, and so while I honestly can't say I'm a full fledged Techaholic, I do have to acknowledge that for many this album will be nothing short of epic.

If you've ever found yourself pouring over the lyrics to a Eminem or Royce song, trying to break down each metaphor and punchline, you'll eat Hell up.

If you consider dressing up putting on clean socks, if you know what the streets smell like at four in the morning, if you consider Shook Ones Pt. II the perfect track to kick back to, you'll have Random Axe on repeat for weeks.

No doubt about it, Finally Famous is full of good music.

King of Hearts, his fourth studio album, is strictly for the grown and sexy. It may not be a new school classic (it's not) but this is a damn good album.

Ultimately, Live From the Underground may not be K.R.I.T.'s best album yet, for more that'd be ReturnOf4Eva, but that's like saying Michael Jordan's fourth championship was the "best" of his six titles.

Kat Dahlia's My Garden is good music. Period.

Z is a mood piece, 10 homogenous tracks that breeze by and flow on a winning combination of sweet vocals, sweeter hooks, and the sweetest of melodies and instrumentals.

Music this good transcends chronology, so whether you're 85 (what up grandma?), just getting your driver's license or anywhere between, you're all welcome into This Generation.

Timberlake and Timbaland (Timbalake?) are at their best when they rely more on organic soul than samples.

For the most part, Common's been an almost staggeringly consistent presence in music for years, and then fittingly, his new album Nobody's Smiling, is as good as anything he's done.

Ultimately V&A is an album that presents a fearlessly original and coherent, if distorted, vision, something that's become an endangered species in the age of the hit single.

The overall result is an album that's easily enjoyable, but not particularly interesting.

Talk That Talk is both a sharp departure from her dark, rock-infused last two albums Rated R and Loud and a more easily enjoyable work.

Chiddy Bang is the sound of the younger generation, which is to say that they sound like whatever they feel like at the time, and their debut album Breakfast proves it.

To play the devil's advocate to the devil's advocate I just played, Thursday does shown a sonic growth from House of Balloons. It even dares – gasp – to up the tempo, bringing in a rapid fire hi-hat to propel the hook of Life of the Party and giving Heaven or Las Vegas a multi-instrument, layered sound we hadn't heard from them before.

Cole World is full of evidence that when Cole sits down to write a hit, he mysteriously loses that intangible quality that first earned him these weighty expectations.

That leaves us with a placeholder project while Dream sorts out some contractual "issues" with Def Jam over his delayed fourth album Diary of a Madman, and frankly I'll take this placeholder over 90% of R&B's official projects.

This is an album you play during a lazy Sunday afternoon, an album you reach for during a long road-trip, and in a way that's far more valuable than the month's new hottest thing.