Just over a year ago, when U2 was in danger of losing its constituency, the group returned to its roots with All That You Can’t Leave Behind, and — voilà! — the pop-music world responded with a spate of ring-kissing that still has cash registers chiming. Today the lads have…

These days, Bill Doss, a key member of the Elephant 6 collective and a co-founder of Olivia Tremor Control, likes to refer to himself in print as “thebilldoss,” or, when he’s in a hurry, “tbd” — both good examples of how he’s able to freshen up familiar ingredients by giving…

It’s hard to tell where Evans is headed at this point, given the many directions in which she’s been tugged throughout her career. She began as a fairly straightforward soul/R&B crooner, but her involvement with the Notorious B.I.G., whom she married in 1995, and the Artist Formerly Known As Puff…

The spectacular pre-holiday sales success of Echoes isn’t especially surprising. America is filled with people who greatly enjoyed taking drugs during the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s but are no longer in a position to do so on even a semi-regular basis. For them, two discs of Floyd offer a safe,…

As film critics everywhere have pointed out, the first Ocean’s Eleven, released in 1960, isn’t much of a movie. The assorted “actors,” led by Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and Sammy Davis Jr., look as if they’re either suffering from lingering hangovers or are still tipsy (which mostly they were), and…

Selling out hasn’t been as simple as Tricky imagined. The former Adrian Thaws made reviewers swoon with 1995’s Maxinquaye, a moody, atmospheric tour de force that helped establish the trip-hop genre worldwide. But although he clearly felt worthy of the praise he received (his ego is as juicy and robust…

Although its members insist otherwise, my guess is that Tha Alkaholiks changed their name to Tha Liks mainly to ensure that their new disc, X.O. Experience, wouldn’t be rejected out of hand by rack jobbers at Targets and Wal-Marts from sea to shining sea. After all, E-Swift, Tash and J-Ro…

Writing reviews of recordings by freshly dead artists is a tricky business that frequently results in overrating, a critical embarrassment that keeps on giving. Think about all those poor schmoes who, rightly thunderstruck by John Lennon’s murder, found themselves raving about Double Fantasy, a modest album that’s not even within…

If anyone should understand the pitfalls of being labeled, it’s DJ/producer Roni Size. Back in 1997, on the release of his innovative platter New Forms, made in conjunction with a crew collectively known as Reprazent, he emerged as the most public face of the dance music style dubbed “drum ‘n’…

In one of those ironies with which popular culture brims, Marilyn Manson was tarred with the stain of the Columbine shootings even though the perpetrators of that crime had no interest in his music, while Rammstein, whose noise the killers reportedly admired, largely escaped public scrutiny. The main reason, in…

The popularity of tough-nosed hip-hop continues to present challenges to R&B vocalists. Soulsters who go too heavy on sentiment, eschewing the sort of musical nods that might enhance their credibility with ‘bangers, risk coming across as weak, passé — old school in a tame way. But those who overemphasize biceps,…

Genuine musical objectivity is tough to come by, since most listeners, try as they might, can’t help but bring biases to what they hear. Sometimes these predispositions are personal; for instance, my beloved can no longer listen to the Beach Boys’ “Help Me, Rhonda” without displeasure, because it was playing…

With the likes of Korn and Rage Against the Machine demonstrating that those predictions of rock’s commercial demise you heard a year or two back were premature (again!), brainiacs at Madonna’s Maverick imprint decided to promote the Deftones into the next big heavy-music thang — and so far, their strategy…

Common is one ambitious cat — and hip-hop sure as hell needs more of those. But on his previous album, 1997’s One Day It’ll All Make Sense, he was so driven to create a lyrical masterpiece that his music sometimes suffered by comparison. Praise be, then, for his latest, which…

No one’s ever accused Sascha Konietzko, the man behind the now-dead KMFDM and the very much alive MDFMK, of suffering from incurable optimism. Since the ’80s, he’s made hard-as-nails electro/industrial music whose lyrics focus on topics such as inhumanity and anguish, not true love and thongs. But last year’s massacre…

“I like trying to remain mysterious,” says Michael Schwartz, whose turntablist nom de plume is Mix Master Mike. “It’s like hitting and running — hit the spot, then go home and work on the formula until my next call comes, and I get a chance to show people real hip-hop…

Over the course of the last decade or so, rappers have made a tradition of exaggerating the misery of their childhoods. Some emcees truly grew up in environments marked by grinding poverty, rampant crime and utter hopelessness, but plenty of others who claim to know about the mean streets firsthand…

O’Shea Jackson, known to friends and enemies alike as Ice Cube, has a daughter, a son and a stepson whose ages range from 4 to 11. But despite their tender years, he sees no reason they shouldn’t be able to enjoy the furious wit and wisdom he puts on his…

Vanessa Daou Slow to Burn (MCA) Virgin Island jazz-pop/dance diva Vanessa Daou and her producer/instrumentalist husband Peter Daou earned the favorable notice of dance-club feminists in 1994 with Zipless, an album that set the poetry and occasionally the voice of Erica Jong to music (the Fear of Flying author is…

“I think anytime you make a record, it’s got to be a leap of faith,” contends Emmylou Harris. “Because you never know how it’s going to turn out.” Harris has plummeted into the unknown on numerous occasions during her more-than-quarter-century career, with mostly positive results. But even longtime supporters were…

DJ Krush Meiso (Axiom) Various artists Axiom Altered Beats: Assassin Knowledges of the Remanipulated (Axiom) Available mostly in specialty shops, surreptitiously packaged in black record jackets, the art of the deejay has spent years in the underground. Finally, the record industry is warming to the deejay trade, and the result…

“It’s kinda hectic, man,” says Wyclef “Clef” Jean, the Haitian-blooded rapper, songwriter and sonic engineer for the Fugees. “A lot of things are going on.” And, Jean should have added, those things are pretty damn nice–the kinds of things that only happen to a group experiencing its commercial breakthrough. The…