Music reviews. CD reviews. Critically hip!

Listening to Angie Stone’s The Art of Love and War is like spending a pleasant afternoon with someone you haven’t seen in a while. There’s nostalgia and comfortable familiarity, but also the excitement of rekindling an old friendship. Stone’s brand of smooth neo-soul with smatterings of funk is the kind ...

Galactic Funk, the album by Eric Terdjman is an attempt at something different. From the title, I gathered that he is trying to sound futuristic yet soulful. The concept of this appealed to me before I heard the music. However, once I was able to hear Galactic ...

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 ...

First off, before I get to anything else, I want to tell you a few things: TJ Lavin is a professional BMX rider. You may have seen him winning gold at the X Games. You may have seen him hosting several Real World/Road Rules challenges. And, ...

I’m not buying it. A Set it Off jump off leaving me extended from a cliff in excitement while the rest of the album sends me on a mission trying to find that same initial high I had when I first put the album in, almost like a drug a ...

Offwhyte offers an underground sound, a creative little background to groove to. Reminding me of an underground party where you can hardly see within a dark crowded room, or a  mellow atmosphere of lounging with a drink in hand and casually mingling, Rain or Shine your friends are surely jealous that you were ...

It’s safe to say that the up and coming band, OneRepublic owes a lot of thanks to hip hop artist Timbaland for their recent fame. Timbaland remixed and released OneRepublic’s Apologize on his newest album, Shock Value, and it quickly became a hit. Now the only remaining question is ...

Sakai is a talented singer from California with a great style. Her new album, Dream Big, is impressive. It's moving and sexy, reminiscent of the great early 90's R&B. Every song has a soulful musicality about it. You can really get into this album.Sakai has a ...

Starkillers is the stage name for Las Vegas’ dj/producer Nick Terranova, who recently had two monster dance hits, the classic "Discoteka" and the followup, somewhat derivative, "Scream." Dirty Sounds Vol. One contains the original mixes of both of those hits, along with a number of remixes by Terranova in his ...

You gotta listen to the music.I pre-judged A Woman's Touch by Thelma Houston. Houston’s major claim to fame is Don’t Leave Me This Way, a disco-tinged cover of a Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes tune, which was a hit for her twice, once in 1977 and again in the mid-1990s. She ...