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

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.

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

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

Speakerboxxx--by itself the album of the year--makes the failings of The Love Below all the more evident.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

A sprawling and undisciplined mess... but it’s fully attuned to what made West so compelling in the first place, namely chunks of samples that feel raw and convey an underdog sensibility.

On Showtime, Dizzee doesn’t give up his sonic adventurousness, but he is a lot more disciplined about it.

Unlike her recent work, Stumble Into Grace is made up solely of Harris’s work--love songs like “Can You Hear Me Now” that perfectly suit her voice, which is sweet and whispery yet never sentimental.

Hail to the Thief is overloaded with miraculous sounds.

There is nothing tentative or unpolished about any of these songs.

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

When you’re treated to such a powerful front woman, it seems almost unfair to complain about the lack of sophisticated sonics.

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

Each and every hand clap and piano chord on their foot-stomping, flawless new album, now streaming on their label's Website, is obsessively placed.

Underneath all of those lush, gorgeous strings, [producer] Hogarth then layered the electronic beats, delays, fades, and distortions that lend the album its freshness and vitality.

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

Badu has rejected the role of soul princess and chosen instead to embrace a raw, unhinged spirituality that separates her from the pack.

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

His solo debut, Stephen Malkmus, doesn't sound so different from late-period Pavement, but at least he's regained his smart-ass swagger.

Springsteen refuses to allow himself either vengefulness or excessive pride, and he avoids too-literal musings on the tragedy that ultimately undermined songs like Neil Young's "Let's Roll."

Q-Tip's flow on his new disc remains mellow, freewheeling, and vaguely inspirational. But it doesn't feel relevant.

On Rooty, Basement Jaxx refines the ambitious but untidy sprawl of its debut into a carnivalesque mix of two-step, house, funk, and disco with a modern take on George Clinton's late-seventies mission of "rescuing dance music from the blahs."