Music reviews. CD reviews. Critically hip!

Mike Skinner brought cockney Rap to the rest of the world a few years ago ala The Streets. Original Pirate Material and A Grand Don't Come for Free introduced us to one white guy's perspective of London's underground youth, complete with inventive backbeats, samplings and arrangements that brought his music tantalizingly close to a mainstream crossover. Building on Skinner's foundation, Jack Allsopp's alter ego, Just Jack, clocks in with his sophomore release, Overtones. This album has drawn huge critical acclaim and an absolute crapload of comparisons to The Streets as the sound is just too similar to avoid comparison. I'm not even going to try to play down the similarities, other than to say that Just Jack's treatments round the edges and soften the blow and bombast on most of the tracks. The four letter words are few and far between, as are the references to drugs and violence -- toning it down to a point where it's questionable whether the dreaded parental warning should be stuck to the cover. But it's all still there -- it's life by the way -- just toned down a bit so as to make the music maybe, dare I say, more radio friendly?

Allsopp hit gold earlier this year when he performed one of the tracks from Overtones, Starz in Their Eyes, on the venerable UK "Late Night with Jools Holland" show. His performance made him an overnight sensation for a minute or two, propelling the track to number two on the UK Charts. While the subsequent singles didn't fare nearly as well, the second album Overtones not only met with the same high critical acclaim as his debut, but it's sold a pretty impressive number of copies as well.

Along with the gritty, urban London white rapper musings, there's some really clever arrangements and smooth, melodic interludes between the words to keep you tapping your feet and humming along, whether you like the lyrics and gritty cockney cadence or not. Unlike many albums that tend to start off strong, but unravel as they go along, the opposite is true with Overtones -- it starts off relatively strong, but just gets stronger. Melody-wise the tracks become more lush and well thought out and the lyrics become more smoothly intertwined with the music as things progress. Specifically, No Time and Spectacular Failures, later in the disc, are stronger than many of the tracks that come before. The break away UK hit Starz in Their Eyes has a catchy, Pet Shop Boys sounding delivery, but the spoken hip-hop bridge into the chorus just doesn't cut it. Also, with Disco Friends, there's this really cool synth vocal thing going on that is as addictive as crack, but the lyrics are just so... well... stupid, I can't get past them. Good news is there are stronger tracks featuring the rap-talking over the smooth crooning Allsopp. There's even some star power included with the guest vocals of Kylie Minogue on Talk Too Much, which is a strong, radio friendly track, but even with the big name behind it, this track didn't hit Top of the Pops territory... it just never caught on.

If you're looking for the Rapping side of Just Jack, gravitate toward Lost with its back beat and lazy streetcorner sax. If the melodies and a smooth string arrangement are your thing, check out Mourning Morning. All in all, I really like this album. Although at the end of the day I still prefer the urban Londan edginess of The Streets, Just Jack runs along the same vein and it's a fun listen and worth a regular rotation on my random play list.