Jeff Beck makes albums with infuriating infrequency. When he does, the guitarist acts more like a guest star than the main attraction. For Who Else!, his fifth album in two decades, Beck co-wrote just three of the eleven tracks. And except for some digital dance flourishes and the Gaelic space folk of "Declan," the chrome-funk and ice-ballad instrumentals on Who Else! are all cut from the familiar wailing-fusion cloth of Beck's mid-Seventies beauties, Blow by Blow and Wired.

But we put up with it all, because Beck, at fifty-four, is at the peak of his technique; secure in his chops, oblivious to fads, he makes records that celebrate the guitar's capacity for physical sensation. Who Else! is a feast of tone color and riff musculature: the tingle of the tart, down-slope fretboard runs in "Brush With the Blues"; the wasp-horde buzz and hang-gliding feedback of "What Mama Said"; the tumbling, Arabic country-blues licks in "Psycho Sam." Beck is no longer a mere guitar hero; he has become a consummate sound. And he's always worth the wait.

“Jimbrowski”

Jungle Brothers sampled, among other things, jazz, James Brown and house music. The New York crew's lyrics were equally diverse but never short on clever wordplay or a playful sense of humor, as exemplified by this song from 1988's Straight Out the Jungle. "The idea for that came at the end of a studio session, with Mike, me, Red Alert and a woman Red was dating at the time," says the group’s Afrika Baby Bam. "Red was flirting with her and kept saying 'Jimbrowski' the whole night. Mike and I wrote the rhymes on the way back from the subway."