Lil' Kim Notorious K.I.M. (Undeas/Atlantic)

Notorious K.I.M., the long-awaited sophomore blast from B.I.G. protTgT Lil' Kim, starts off strong -- and not just because the iced-out, currently blonde bombshell is topless and tattooed on the album cover. The first five cuts find the comeback Queen Bee rhyming calmly and confidently over disparate but equally thumping tracks. Never the complex lyricist, Kim is at her most convincing with simple cadences and modest boasts like, "At first I seem friendly, but that's just in me/I warn you, when I blow it gets a little windy" from "Custom Made (Give It To You)." The big bass kicks and funky Eddie Kendricks guitar lick of "Who's Number One?" save Kim from her own attempts at cleverness ("Like the ever, I glades"). Problems arise on Notorious, however, when Kim's producers fail her. In typical Bad Boy fashion, beatmakers Shaft, Deric "D-Dot" Angelettie and Mario "Yellowman" Winans try -- unsuccessfully -- to craft contemporary music out of respectable elements from the past. Pat Benatar, Suzanne Vega and the Art of Noise are all plundered and put to shame as a result. Newcomer Shaft, who's 0 for 3 on this album, provides Kim with a dry musical pill entitled "She Don't Love You." The quick-thinking Queen slathers the dull beat with distracting raunch: "I'll let you come in me, while you stick it in the bootie/Lick the nut off, stick it back in the coochie." Luckily for Kim, when neither her lyrics nor her beats suffice, she can always fall back on her ass. (NEIL DRUMMING)

Kottonmouth Kings High Society Suburban Noize (Capitol)

More stoned than sublime, cockier than Cypress Hill, trashier than 311, Kottonmouth Kings embody nearly every hoary hip-hop honky clichT on their second album, High Society. This Orange County, Calif., posse shamelessly bites the cadences of all its favorite dope MCs, from Eazy-E and Snoop Dogg to the Beastie Boys. Chants of "Blaze all day, every day" (the chorus of "First Class") epitomize the depth of their songwriting. They even survive a rancid rhyme battle with their Midwest cracker peers, Insane Clown Posse, on "Wicket Clowns." So then what makes High Society such a guilty pleasure? Maybe it's the grooving metallic production, which is both disarmingly bugged out and appealingly populist (think Kid Rock trying on outfits at Paul's Boutique while blunted on The Chronic). There's also the fact that, for all their goofy bong-hit braggadocio and dry-mouthed humor, these young punks can actually flow on the mike. In the white-boy, skate-rap, nut-grabbin', crunk-punk-funk arena, these Kings rule. (MATT DIEHL -- RS 843)

Richard Ashcroft Alone With Everybody (Virgin)

The Verve had a huge hit a few years ago with "Bitter Sweet Symphony" but split when singer Richard Ashcroft and guitarist Nick McCabe suddenly remembered they loathed each other. Ashcroft's solo debut, Alone With Everybody, is a quality set of long, slow ballads, heavy on the strings, with pretties like "Everybody" and "Brave New World" to offset the unbelievably awful, perfectly titled "C'Mon People (We're Making It Now)." The problem is that Alone never peaks -- it's without a memorable riff or melody or chorus standing out from the mellow flow. Ashcroft has superhuman levels of sullen charisma, but like Ian Brown and so many other Brit-rock stars, he needs a musical cohort who can get on his nerves enough to generate some friction. (ROB SHEFFIELD -- excerpted from RS 844/845)

Nina Gordon Tonight and the Rest of My Life (Warner Bros.)

When singers Nina Gordon and Louise Post parted ways a few years ago, Post took with her more than the name Veruca Salt -- she kept the biting sarcasm, the high harmonies and most of the rock & roll spirit. Which leaves Gordon with Heart-like power ballads. It's sad, because the Chicago quartet Veruca Salt almost followed contemporaries Liz Phair, Smashing Pumpkins and Urge Overkill down the road to alternative-rock greatness. Produced by mainstream metal veteran Bob Rock, Gordon's solo debut relies far too heavily on low-rent Madonna-like crooning. "Why am I so terrified to close my eyes tonight?" she wonders blandly on "Horses in the City." Song after song, from the title track to the closing "The End of the World," refuses to rock in the same fashion. Gordon is more effective with fast, guitar-heavy stuff, like the catchy "Now I Can Die" and the Joan Jett-style "Badway." But overall she misses Post more than Post missed her. (STEVE KNOPPER)

Queensryche Greatest Hits (Virgin/EMI)

Queensryche never really got half the respect they deserved. The Top 10 success of 1990's "Silent Lucidity" may have doomed them to be forever lumped with all the other hair metal bands who scored with a breakout ballad, but the song had a hell of a lot more grey matter behind it than "Every Rose Has Its Thorn." The rest of the monster Empire album wasn't bad either, and its paranoid concept album predecessor Operation: Mindcrime was smarter high concept metal than Rush ever cooked up (huge hooks, too -- the excellent single "Eyes of a Stranger" was no anomaly). But sadly, after Empire nobody cared much, and it didn't help Queensryche being from Seattle right when grunge exploded. Greatest Hits squanders too much space on the band's pre-Mindcrime Judas Priest-isms (those shrieks!), and most of the post Empire selections don't reveal much growth. But the stuff that holds up -- "I Don't Believe in Love," "Empire," "I Am I" -- still sounds glorious. They won't be building any new empires with this best-of, but it's a noble effort. (RICHARD SKANSE)

Doug Sahm The Return of Wayne Douglas (Tornado)

"This may be the last song I'll ever write for you": That line in "You Was for Real," a slice of fine country anguish on The Return of Wayne Douglas, comes with an extra chill. Recorded last summer in Floresville, Texas, near Doug Sahm's hometown of San Antonio, the album became his final bow when he died on November 18th at fifty-eight. . . . Wayne Douglas (a reversal of Sahm's first and middle names) is not a return so much as a reaffirmation of the country swing and sentiment ever present in Sahm's music. He covers Dylan's "Love Minus Zero/No Limit" with cowpuncher pathos and takes the hippie groove of his '69 SDQ hit, "Mendocino," out to open prairie in "Beautiful Texas Sunshine." "Oh No! Not Another One" is Sahm's honky-tonk potshot at plastic country stars: "There's a young dude walking across the stage like a gazelle/Hell, I'll bet he never even heard of Lefty Frizzell." But Sahm doesn't sound bitter. He loved taking Texas music to the world; he sings like a man with plenty of work to do . . . (DAVID FRICKE -- excerpted from RS 844/845)

ABC Lexicon Of Live (Koch)

Following its 1991 break-up and a six year hiatus, Eighties New Romantic-era superstars ABC made a comeback. Who knew? This live recording captures one night on a semi-triumphant return tour with the Culture Club and the Human League in 1997. Reprising the slick, soul-inflected Roxy-inspired music, only lead singer Martin Fry remains from the original line-up -- which might explain the less than compelling performance. Even though he drags out the big guns -- "When Smokey Sings," "Be Near Me" and "Poison Arrow" -- his voice isn't quite as silky as it once was and it just plain lacks the oomph to carry the songs. Wisely, he only briefly visits the late-career, less dynamic repertoire, but the band doesn't work out the kinks till the too-little-too-late finale, "The Look Of Love." Though everyone gets big points for trying, the verdict on the package is a flatline -- two thumbs, horizontal. (DENISE SULLIVAN)

Diego Cortez Stuzzicadenti 1997-99 (Bar/None)

Thank goodness for DJ Spooky. Without his production touches on Stuzicadenti (Italian for "toothpicks," apparently), this album would easily be the avant-garde results from spending too many years being fostered in a hippie art supportive community that thinks telephone hums and xylophones in random patterns make interesting music. "Scamander" gives a nod to DJ Shadow and David Holmes' cityscape production skills, but the rest -- recorded talking, random drum patterns, mapless piano notes, and eerie noises -- are grating on not only the ears but ones patience as well. When Cortez next decides to create some art noise, perhaps he should take note from abstract German forefathers like Einsturzende Neubaten, who create musical art pieces out of bizarre samples, but still manage to find the song. (JOLIE LASH)

Angela Via Angela Via (Atlantic)

Laugh if you will, but well-fed afternoon chat-show host Rosie O'Donnell is no small ally in the pop business. Her endorsements for Macy Gray helped throw a puttering career into high gear. Now eighteen-year-old singer-songwriter Angela Via is her latest beneficiary. Could it have anything to do with the fact that Via's face will appear on fifteen-million boxes of Cocoa Puffs cereal this fall? Maybe not. Tipped as Christina Aguilera's younger, more refined successor, Via has already scored a hit on the Pokemon soundtrack, starred in an Internet-only film called Chaos Theory and co-authored a song with Carole King for her self-titled debut. The trouble is, the album itself is little more than second-servings of everything else currently clogging pop radio; with her acrobatic voice setting off a series of soft-focus Mariah Carey flashbacks. It's not horrible, just pointless. (AIDIN VAZIRI)

Def Squad Presents Erick Onasis (DreamWorks)

Erick Sermon may have changed his surname, but he wants people to know that he's still as hardcore as ever. His latest release opens with the E in EPMD stepping out on mate, kids, and freshly-mowed lawn to administer a beatdown to some shit-talking clown. On "Don't Get Gassed," Erick warns, "I'm a let you know somethin': I'll whoop yo ass." Indeed, he spends most of the album playing bully of the block over his signature hip-hop funk hybrid beats. E's production is so sparse and formulaic that the tracks are nearly indistinguishable from one another. The tough guy routine also gets tired. "So Sweet" finds an aurally resurrected Eazy E foolishly shouting "being a gangster is so neat" on the chorus. Whether Sermon or Onasis, Erick would be a lot more fun to listen to if he wasn't trying so hard to prove something. (DRUMMING)

souLDecision No One Does It Better (MCA)

Realizing the anemic doo-wop sound of American boy-bands is reaching the end of its rope, Vancouver trio souLDecision ignites the old formula with bouncy new wave guitars and exuberant European dance grooves. The result is a series of endearingly sprightly pop songs that smoothly weave around the youthful swing of Wham! ("I Don't Need Anyone") and suave, swoon-worthy harmonies ("Baby Come Back"). Whether Generation TRL will get past the camp and latch onto the quaint melodies remains to be seen. But these guys aren't sweating it. On first single "Faded" (already a number one hit in Canada), they sing: "I like the way you're making me wait/ At the end of the night when I make up your mind you'll be coming on home with me." (VAZIRI)

Trance Nation America Ministry of Sound (Ultra Records)

Ministry, the brand behind Britain's biggest mix CDs, are hoping to take their phenomenal success stateside with this, their first release. In the U.K. the company's success is owed not only to the healthy state of the dance scene, but also to the way their compilations are generally filled choc-a-bloc with all of the biggest dance anthems. Unfortunately, on the American version, West Coast trance DJ Taylor, serving up disc one, offers anthems from so long ago, like Garbage's "Milk" and his own "Anomaly," produced by BT, that is just plain old dull. U.S. DJs outside the New York house elite are already given a tough enough time for not being on par with their European counterparts and this mix is just further fuel for the fire. Disc two by Jimmy Van M is startlingly crisp and cut from the same cloth as his friends the illustrious Sasha and John Digweed blending a gorgeous cutting edge building mix of progressive house, but the disparity between the two DJs leaves you wondering, why bother? (LASH)

Taproot Gift (Velvet Hammer/Atlantic)

Taproot's implicit promise -- a band that's alternately bruising and introspective -- sounds interesting enough on paper. But in practice, at least as revealed on "Gift," the Michigan quartet offers little more than a semi-inspired vision of the by-now-rote mosh-pit self-pity rock that loses any emotional resonance by virtue of its fans running headlong into one another. Sure, there's some intriguing sounds introduced (such as digital techno-bleeps in the intros and a heap of fascinating guitar treatments). Vocalist Stephen Richards is endowed with a versatile set of pipes, too. But the rhythms, textures and songwriting ring repetitive by the third tune. Thus, Gift begs the question: Why rush out with a whole album when a young, promising band such as Taproot would be better served by working one great single? Then again, that's a question as old as pop music itself. Gift is, in the end, a monochromatic sonic and emotional exercise made by an immature band that, hopefully, will grow into their prodigious riffs. (CHRIS HANDYSIDE)

Penelope Houston Once in a Blue Moon (penelope.net/Innerstate)

Penelope Houston's always slipped through the cracks. She's not quite rock or folk, and not quite underground or mainstream. As a consequence of her inability to fit into the American marketplace, much of her work has only been released in Europe. Once in a Blue Moon, issued on her own penelope.net label, gives Americans a chance to play catch-up, taking the bulk of its fifteen tracks from two out-of-print European CDs (from 1993 and 1994), adding a half-dozen previously unissued demos and outtakes from the last several years. This archive compilation isn't the ideal introduction to her music, but it's a good cross-section of her edgy folk-rock. Colored by melancholic melodies and ruminations about complex relationships where affection mingles with hurt and bitterness, it's best at its darkest and most introspective, especially when it merges mandolins and autoharp with standard rock instruments. (RICHIE UNTERBERGER)

(June 28, 2000)