"I've got the nerds rapping hard shit/Dummies rapping smart shit," boasts J. Cole on his major-label debut. Cole is brainier than most mainstream MCs but too flashy for the underground; he's equally at home flaunting success and sensitivity – his "from-the-heart shit," as he calls it. He's a technically superb rapper, packing these sleek, snappy, mostly self-produced tracks with dozens of great punch lines. ("Got the game in a headlock/I'm blasting that/I'm laughing at/You old niggas/Redd Foxx.") But while he tries to wring pathos out of everything from career struggles to unplanned pregnancies, the melodrama feels rote; the rhymes hit the mark but the stories leave you cold. If he evens out the ratio of from-the-heart shit to smart shit, Cole could be great. 

Listen to "Mr. Nice Watch" feat. Jay-Z:

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“Is It True”

As the British Invasion reached its peak in 1964, Brenda Lee went from Nashville to London to record one of her hardest-rocking hits, her perky vocal backed by a stuttering, squalling guitar. That guitar was played by session musician Jimmy Page, yet to skyrocket to fame with first the Yardbirds and then Led Zeppelin. "She said to me, 'I've come here to make a record with the British sound,'" remembered producer Mickie Most. "She felt she wouldn't get the same sound in Nashville because they're only just catching up on the British beat group sound of about six months ago."