Can it be ten years since Warren G and Nate Dogg proclaimed the G-funk era? That adds up to so much drama in the LBC! But it's still hard being Snoop D-O-G-G, and no doubt it's even harder being Warren G or Nate Dogg, so all three stars team up for the excellent G-funk-era-revival supergroup 213. That's right -- gangstizzle nostalgizzle! It's cool how Snoop comes on as one of the guys, even if he's the one making moves with Shaquille in his Snoop de Ville. There's the mellow Kanye West jam "Another Summer," the inevitable "I'm Rick James, bitch!" skit, Snoop's personal balls-licking instructions and the Eighties R&B tribute "Joysticc." In "My Dirty Ho," Snoop gets misty about the good old days: "I remember bitches wouldn't fight back/Now these ho's push the game/And they wanna strike back." The game don't wait, dog. (ROB SHEFFIELD)

Lisa Loeb The Way It Really Is (Zoe)

As she proved with her hits "Stay" and "I Do," Loeb is a singer-songwriter who knows how to mix ponderousness with pop-wise charm. Even the slowest stuff here is palatable, and the more upbeat songs aren't all that far removed from the "mature" pop-rock stuff that studio pros have been turning out for Pink and Liz Phair. Which ain't a bad thing at all. (AMELIA MCDONELL-PARRY)

Martina Topley-Bird Anything (Palm Pictures)

This London-born singer was a teenager when her air-streaked soprano distinguished the initial albums by Tricky, providing a key element of his sublimely unpretty Maxinquaye album. Now twenty-six, Martina Topley-Bird has delivered a fantastic solo debut. Co-produced by Topley-Bird and Alex McGowan, the collection interknits bluesy intimacy, R&B extroversion, theatrical confessions and rock chord progressions while keeping both feet planted in fertile electronic soil. Topley-Bird ascends to R&B heaven on "Soulfood," and then -- with Queens of the Stone Age's great Josh Homme -- fuses the coolest Jamaican music and thorniest L.A. rock on "Need One." Topley-Bird is basically a groove singer, but she knows the secret that many R&B divas miss: You need to mix your divinity with some dirt. Anything succeeds because its soul reveries are more than a little stressed-out. (JAMES HUNTER)

Ataxia Automatic Writing (Record Collection)

Red Hot Chili Peppers' guitarist John Frusciante is following through on his promise to issue approximately an album of new material a month following this year's "official" Warner Brothers release Shadows Collide With People. Ataxia's Automatic Writing is the second release of this plan and the first of a two-part collection featuring Bicycle Thief drummer Josh Klinghoffer and Fugazi bassist Joe Lally. The trio recorded nearly everything live over four days in a loose improvisational groove that stirs up the early post-punk promise of Public Image Limited and the latter day psychedelic twistings of Julian Cope. Ataxia attempts to wring out the most music it can from the least amount of raw material. "Dust" begins things with a simple robotic guitar line that recalls Joy Division, while "Montreal" closes for twelve minutes over a two-note bass riff. Spaceheads in search of the eternal jam, Ataxia are calling. (ROB O'CONNOR)

Ari Hest Someone to Tell (Columbia/Red Ink)

Comparing Ari Hest to John Mayer is obvious -- he's another young singer-songwriter (and labelmate) who built a nationwide fan base through relentless college tours and a couple self-released discs. However, Hest firmly earns his credentials as a contemporary, not a clone, on his major-label debut. Someone to Tell never veers from middle-of-the road acoustic rock, but it's to Hest's credit that he eschews the need to reinvent the wheel. The Bronx native often recalls tri-state hero Bruce Springsteen in his efficient, vivid songwriting and rich, mature voice; the material ranges from transcending small-town life in "Aberdeen" to the horn-spiked, Dave Matthews Band-esque "Consistency." When he sings "In the absence of this fear and pain/I will finally bid my ball and chain/A fond farewell" in the moving-on anthem "A Fond Farewell," Hest sounds like a man who has lived much longer than his twenty-four years. (PETE GLOWATSKY)

Charlotte Martin On Your Shore(RCA)

Charlotte Martin says she's a Goth, but listening to her tap away at the high keys of her piano, it's difficult to think of her as anything but angelic. A classically trained opera singer, Martin has expanded her songwriting a lot more on this release than on her previous ones, and some of that Goth side even comes across in the muted tribal beats of "Limits of Our Love." Most of the songs meander around somewhat, focusing at all times on her voice, but the standout tracks are the darker, brooding ones such as "Something Like a Hero" and the howling wind of "Haunted." That melancholy tone also manifests itself in the incredibly pained stories in the songs, as Martin describes herself as more hormonal than the contemporaries with whom she's likely to suffer comparisons (namely Tori Amos). But all of those modern ladies take their cue from Joni Mitchell anyway, as Martin does on "Beautiful Life," which would be a great close for the album were it not followed by the umpteenth cover of "Wild Horses." (LANCE SCOTT WALKER)

Jon Dee Graham The Great Battle (New West)

Having spent years as a sideman for acts ranging from the True Believers to John Doe to Kelly Willis, Austin's Jon Dee Graham didn't get around to releasing an album under his own name until he was thirty-eight. Now seven years and four albums into his solo career, he's proven himself to be one of the finest songwriters in the Americana arena -- and he's still a hell of a mean guitarist, to boot. For newcomers, The Great Battle will be a revelation; it's not every day you discover an artist who growls like Howlin' Wolf and Tom Waits locked in a death match, rocks a cover of Neil Young's "Harvest" and makes it his own and delivers original songs as beautiful as "World So Full." For veteran Graham fans, The Great Battle is the big one, as ferocious as his primal roar through the opening "Twilight" and as human as the everyman struggle he grapples with in the title track. (RICHARD SKANSE)

Lennon Career Suicide (John Galt Entertainment)

For rocker girls, and the guys who kneel at their altar, Lennon was a revelation at the dawn of the 21st Century. She was metal, but confessional; her voice wasn't ravaged, it was powerful and melodic. On her debut, 5:30 Saturday Morning, her youthful vision was clear even if its execution was haphazard at best. On Career Suicide, Lennon recasts herself with all acoustic, piano-based re-recordings and unreleased tracks. A proper sophomore effort I Am, is due out later in the year. There are occasional successes here but a general overwrought delivery. "I'm caught in between your lies and my dreams and there's no one that I can see," she sings on "Brake of Your Car." This album's title may have been tongue-in-cheek, but for an artist who works best in the fast, hard, loud, oeuvre, it might actually be apt. (ANDREW STRICKMAN)

Velvet Crush Stereo Blues (Action Music)

On their seventh album, Velvet Crush bring back the rock that they eschewed on their last release, Soft Sounds. Stereo Blues opens with drummer Ric Menck's calling card -- quarter notes tapped out on a high-hat. As the band's pilot and prophet, Menck's perfectly tuned drums are more than just backbone; his solid thud and splashy cymbals are often as prominent as frontman Paul Chastain's vocals. With pared-down production and guitars that come in chunky power chords and sweeping gusts, Stereo Blues is closer in spirit to Velvet Crush's raw debut, In the Presence of Greatness, than their more polished major-label release, Teenage Symphonies to God. But the group still takes cues from the Seventies guitar-driven pop of Badfinger and Big Star: colossal choruses, slinky melodies and sweet harmonies packed into three minutes or less, with an occasional string-bending freakout ("The Connection"). And the pedal steel on "Great to Be Fine" and "B-Side Blues" serves as a small reminder of Menck's relentless love of country rock. (MEREDITH OCHS)

Hellacopters By the Grace of God (Liquor and Poker Music)

Sweden's Hellacopters just might be the freshest-sounding "geetar" band around these days, with a hooky, nouveau-retro sound that hits you right between the ears. Always energetic -- without the speed-freak hyperactivity of the Hives - the Hellacopters recall the louder sounds of the Sixties, Seventies and, well, our current decade. The title track bridges the whole chronological divide with its blend of Swingin' London twinkle and twang, and new-millennium grit. "All New Low" churns a little harder while "Better Than You" brings to mind prime-time Stooges and is undeniably American in its pedigree. Other highlights include the cozier, piano-laden "Rainy Days Revisited," which harks back to the West Coast sound, the arena-pop of "Go Easy Now" and the full-throttle rocker "Red Light." The Hellacopters refuse to pick a card, preferring instead to shuffle the whole deck and see what comes up. (ADRIAN ZUPP)

n.Lannon Chemical Friends (Badman)

Nyles Lannon's credits include the band Film School and an electronic project, n.In, but as n.Lannon he could fill the shoes vacated by indie-rock's best folk-guitar finger-picker, Elliott Smith. He uses Smith's so-wrong-it's-right sense of melody, phrasing and even recording technique on tender titles like "Hollow Heart" and "Turn Time Around." Throughout the rest of the acoustic/electronic, ambient pop package, he devises ways to showcase his gentle voice and picking prowess, mostly succeeding at hiding its folkier charms with synthesized washes of sound and beat (as on the faded and freaked-out tracks "Demons" and "The Nature of Things"). But the close-to-the-bone finger-stylings of "Fortune Cookie" and "Spy" and the gold, ol' folky strumming on "Cruel" cannot hide their ghosts of Smith and those other slouching troubadours who came before him. Lannon proves himself capable of keeping up with his idols, but he needs to find a voice of his own. (DENISE SULLIVAN)