Game albums often come with as much tabloid distraction as intrigue - between his latest contrived Jay-Z diss ("Uncle Otis") and lame Twitter pranks (like telling his followers to flood the LAPD internship requests), the Compton MC doesn't seem to have given his long-delayed fourth album top priority. Next-gen West Coast-er Kendrick Lamar upstages his elder's flow on "The City," and R&B cuts featuring Lloyd, Mario, Wale and Chris Brown are tepid throwaways. He does give a riveting account of his daughter's birth on "California Dream" and seethes, "We ain't got no options/Wanted to be a boxer, but I was boxed in," on the soul-baring "Ricky." It's proof that, just when you least expect it, he can still rage compellingly.

Listen to "California Dream":

“Too Close”

Next was formed in Minneapolis when the uncle of Terry "T-Low" and Raphael "Tweety" Brown, who was a gospel choir director, introduced the brothers to Robert Lavelle "R.L." Huggar. Sounds of Blackness singer Ann Nesby groomed the R&B group before handing them over to Naughty by Nature's KayGee, who wrote and produced "Too Close." The idea for the song was sparked "from a conversation we had with several girls at a nightclub," explained T-Low. "It's talking about the club scene, with guys getting out of hand and the female telling him to back up, asking, 'What are you doing?'"