"Facing all kinda time/But smile like I'm fine," T.I. crows on "No Matter What." The Atlanta rapper recorded his sixth album while under house arrest for weapons possessions charges, and he faces a year-long prison sentence beginning in 2009. But as the plodding "existential" concept album T.I. vs T.I.P. (2007) showed, he is a far better braggart than brooder — smiling like he's fine is good for business. On Paper Trail, T.I. mostly dispenses with the Tupac-wannabe gangsta-confessor pretensions to deliver catchy, tight, bombastic pop-rap alongside a who's-who of megastar guests (Rihanna, Usher, Lil Wayne). T.I. is still a bit too keen to remake his signature hit "What You Know," but songs like the clever "I'm Illy" and the Just Blaze-produced stomper "Live Your Life" find T.I. reconciling himself to his lot in life: he's a well-oiled hit machine who's more fun than deep.

“V.T.T.L.O.T.F.D.G.F.”

Quite a few musicians have utilized initials for song titles -- Michael Jackson's "P.Y.T.," Abba's "S.O.S.," Donald Fagen's "I.G.Y.," etc. But the more curiously initialed tune has to be "V.T.T.L.O.T.F.D.G.F.," short for "Voyage to the Land of the Freeze-Dried Godzilla Farts." Fishbone's original guitarist, Kendall Jones, explained to Rolling Stone, "When Norwood [Fisher] wrote it, he introduced it to the band saying, 'Man, I've been hearing about all these Nazi right-wing groups on the news saying the Holocaust was staged. So what if America said it never dropped two atom bombs on Japan, that it was actually Godzilla popping a couple off?' Only Norwood would come up with something that out." The same year "V.T.T.L.O.T.F.D.G.F." was released, the film Godzilla 1985 appeared in North America.