On their astonishing new Stankonia (LaFace/Arista), Outkast explore their own disappointment with hip-hop's self-satisfied acquisitiveness. But though it attacks the genre's tunnel vision, the album -- which takes its name from George Clinton's vision of funk as expressing the raw, unruly side of life -- does so with joy (and huge doses of absurdity) instead of with the polemics of Public Enemy.... Stankonia is among the most exciting albums of the year, not only because it brazenly addresses hip-hop's spiritual emptiness (other well-intentioned rappers have tried) but because it musically surpasses the most innovative work of street production dons like Swizz Beatz, Manny Fresh, and Timbaland. By offering something for both the mind and the ass, to borrow from George Clinton's slogan, Outkast, like Gang of Four and Funkadelic before them, make revolution you can dance to.

Here, Nas is so fierce, so plainspoken, so lean with words, that he demolishes not just the oeuvre of our ruling rappers (yes, including Eminem's) and recalls the music's lyrical champs like Rakim, he even brings to mind hip-hop progenitors like Muhammad Ali in the "Rumble in the Jungle" era.

"Love and Theft" showcases the gloriously sloppy spontaneity he's displayed onstage but only rarely captured on record.

Musicology is a thrilling, electric statement by an artist who just might be building toward another creative peak.

A profoundly emotional, uncynical brand of songwriting that showcases Antony’s obsession with nature.

Skinner’s finely honed sense of place still has a nearly hypnotic effect.

Not content to embrace familiar dance-music genres like trance (the way Madonna does when she's feeling experimental), the band delves into the most outré electronic music imaginable, from the amniotic soundscapes of Brian Eno to the industrial gristle of Coil. The result is Radiohead's best album...

Her new album, Vespertine, is the singer's most complete and compelling expression of that wondrous worldview yet.

Bubblegum is a blues record, a powerfully original reinterpretation of the genre.

This is pure non-homogenised, heart-on-sleeve, downright meaningful music, the sort of thing The Wombats cry themselves to sleep over on a nightly basis. For that alone it’s worth a tenner of anybody’s money.

The best record of his career, a collision of the idiosyncratic charms of Portastatic with the exuberant rock power of Superchunk.

Hail to the Thief is overloaded with miraculous sounds.

It is stranger, thornier, and meaner than anything in the band’s past.

Dirt Farmer is an iconic album, this year’s "Time Out of Mind" or "Freedom." Just give him a Grammy.

Broken Social Scene has pulled off the rare feat of making a heavily produced record sound instinctive and spontaneous.

One of the heaviest rock albums since Seattle's heyday.

A deeply satisfying work of storytelling through pop.... What Are You On? is emotionally complex in a way that few of the more prosperous songwriters of Cornog’s generation are capable of producing at this point in their careers.

What's most exciting about Miss E is its sense of playfulness: It's the rare hip-hop album in which unabashed joy -- rather than acquisitiveness or grimacing gangsterism -- is the main ingredient.

How the West Was Won proves that Led Zeppelin was nearly peerless in creating gigantic, thunderous rock.

Especially when heard on headphones, Medulla is an overwhelming sonic bliss-out, Phil Spector’s wall of sound channeled through the voice box.

When in doubt, crank the amps. This is the philosophy behind R.E.M.’s new album, Accelerate, their best, and certainly their loudest, in years.

Animal Collective has evolved; its songs continue to meander and digress, but the mania seems driven by a greater sense of purpose.

Utterly raw and rocking.

An album of taut, bilious rock that -- propelled, not coincidentally, by original Attractions members Steve Nieve and Pete Thomas -- has all the teetering-on-unhinged feel of Costello's very best work.

It rewards that attention with small pleasures: guitar and organ playing off each other’s reverb, bass and drum dancing in and out of step, horns and vocals collapsing into a single bellow. In essence, it offers that luxuriant buzz that made rock and roll one of the great narcotics of the last half-century.

The whole record is about the band skillfully weaving in and out of dramatically different textures and arrangements; each song plays with several musical ideas, not just one or two.

The songs, which have the choppy angles and elegant dissonance of Pavement’s, are painstakingly layered with keyboards and all manner of funky blurps and beeps. It all sounds very labor-intensive—and pretty smart, too.

The latest electro-folk offering from these Canadian twins is somehow cuter, catchier, and more heartache-y than their last disc.