“We are not serious when we are 17.” But Billie Eilish has all the marks of a serious young lady and someone who we should indeed take seriously. At the age of sixteen she released the noteworthy Don’t Smile at Me, an EP created with the help of her older brother, Finneas O’Connell. The EP is comprised of the singles Copycat, Bellyache and Ocean Eyes and was posted two years earlier on Soundcloud when Eilish was just 14 years old. Critics hailed her music due to its depiction of a lost adolescent with bleached hair, dressed in oversized sweaters. With the album When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go? and its strange title and shocking cover, Eilish and her dark hair flaunt their more obscure side. One is immediately struck with how well polished Finneas O’Connell’s production is after an intro in which Eilish jokingly mocks her brother for his Invisalign (a kind of invisible dental brace). The first track Bad Guy features an EDM beat which contrasts with the dreaminess of the subsequent Xanny. The rest of the album follows this trend, weaving together both harsh and soft songs combined with the mature lyrics of a girl who was diagnosed with Tourette’s at the age of 11 and speaks of Xanax and young girls descent into a hellish existence. In this mix of gloomy pop and creepy trap beats, Eilish excels. A real eye-opener. © Charlotte Saintoin/Qobuz

Damn Right ! Who could disagree? Of course Buddy Guy has blues in the blood! The Chicago guitar legend is saying it loud on this album: The Blues Is Alive And Well! At 81 years old, he seems on better form than ever, and has a lot to teach the youth. This is a punkier, rockier bluesman than the present generation, who knows how to bring the blues to a white audience. Old fashioned? The accusation wouldn't offend Buddy Guy, who's just playing his guitar right. Here, the guitarist is discussing the blues with guests who have the stature to hold a conversation with him. Keith Richards and Mick Jagger of the Rolling Stones, Jeff Beck and James Bay feed his talent, and stay in perfect harmony with his genius. And what would be blues without talk of booze and old friends? On Cognac, Buddy Guy seems to shed twenty years when he evokes Muddy Waters. It's too late to sip a brandy with him, but now he's got Keith and others for company. Getting wasted in style, filling up on booze and the blues, dealing out a hand that can't ever end: that's the spirit of the blues. Beyond the music, there is a real discussion that starts between guitar riffs, piano chords and the singer's penetrating voice. Better than a trance, this is a stairway to the underworld opening up. And then there's such a captivating groove on The Blues Is Alive And Well. It's a grand declaration of love for the genre, which, through solitude, poverty and suffering, remains a faithful friend, a life-saver, an intimate journal. Perhaps the album should be seen as a kind of passing-onward of the blues to the generations to come. Blue No More gives a fair account of the idea. It's a duet where Buddy Guy is singing face-to-face with the Pearly Gates. It doesn't dampen his mood at all, through, because he knows that others down below will pick up his baton. And James Bay echoes his master's words back to him: "I won’t be blue no more". © Clara Bismuth/Qobuz

Arriving after the unexpected blast of raw energy that was 2001's Sweet Tea, 2003's Blues Singer could idealistically be seen as the acoustic flip side of that high-voltage, raw electric blues. Like Sweet Tea, Blues Singer is supposed to exist deep down within the Delta blues tradition, only finding Buddy Guy armed with an acoustic guitar and the occasional minimal accompaniment; it's even recorded at the same Mississippi studio that gave its name to the 2001 platter and is helmed by the same producer, Dennis Herring. If only it were that simple! Instead of being an extension or a mirror image of its predecessor, this record is a sleepy comedown from an exhilarating peak. Where Sweet Tea was filled with unpredictable song choices, this plays it safe, hauling out such familiar items as "Hard Time Killing Floor," "Crawlin' Kingsnake," "I Love the Life I Live," and "Sally Mae." And while this retains Jimbo Mathus on guitar, when other musicians pop up, it's not the lively Fat Possum crew, it's studio pros like Jim Keltner, or guest shots by superstars Eric Clapton and B.B. King. While this does afford listeners the rare opportunity to hear B.B. on acoustic, it gives the affair the audience-pleasing veneer that weighed down his mid-'90s efforts. Plus, when it comes right down to it, Guy simply is off on this record, with lazy, mannered vocals and by the book guitar. Despite a few good acoustic duet sessions with Junior Wells, acoustic blues is not really Guy's forte, and the highly disappointing Blues Singer illustrates exactly why.© Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo

Released in the aftermath of the 1991 L.A. riots, The Predator radiates tension. Ice Cube infuses nearly every song, and certainly every interlude, with the hostile mood of the era. Even the album's most laid-back moment, "It Was a Good Day," emits a quiet sense of violent anxiety. Granted, Ice Cube's previous albums had been far from gentle, but they were filled with a different kind of rage. On both AmeriKKKa's Most Wanted (1990) and Death Certificate (1991), he took aim at society in general: women, whites, Koreans, even his former group members in N.W.A. Here, Ice Cube is more focused. He found a relevant episode to magnify with the riots, and he doesn't hold back, beginning with the absolutely crushing "When Will They Shoot?" The song's wall of stomping sound sets the dire tone of The Predator and is immediately followed by "I'm Scared," one of the many disturbing interludes comprised of news commentary related to the riots. It's only during the aforementioned "It Was a Good Day" that Ice Cube somewhat alleviates this album's smothering tension. It's a truly beautiful moment, a career highlight for sure. However, the next song, "We Had to Tear This Mothafucka Up," eclipses the relief with yet more calamity. By the time you get to the album-concluding "Say Hi to the Bad Guy" and its mockery of policeman, hopelessness prevails. The Predator is a grim album, for sure, more so than anything Ice Cube would ever again record. In fact, the darkness is so pervasive that the wit of previous albums is absolutely gone. Besides the halfhearted wit of "Gangsta's Fairytale, Pt. 2," you won't find any humor here, just tension. Given this, it's not one of Ice Cube's more accessible albums despite boasting a few of his biggest hits. It is his most serious album, though, as well as his last important album of the '90s.© Jason Birchmeier /TiVo

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After centering himself with the confessional 2010 release Recovery, Eminem entered his forties while watching his beloved city of Detroit literally go bankrupt. The cover here displays this descent with an updated picture of the rapper's teenage home, first featured on the MM LP of 2000 but now boarded up, and yet this 8 Mile child cares much more about the present than the past, as this vicious, infectious, hilarious triumph is no nostalgia trip, just the 2013 version of Marshall the experienced maverick on a tear, dealing with the current state of events and kicking up dust with his trademark maniac attack while effortlessly juggling his over-40 wisdom with stuff you'd slap a teenager for saying. Key cut "Rap God" is the quintessential track as it blasts out homophobic cut-downs and other inexcusable lyrics, because Marshall's the "Dale Earnhardt of the trailer park," but "I still rap like I'm on my Pharoahe Monch grind," and suddenly his Stan Lee-like origin story begins to take shape. Marshall is a super villain so familiar with hate and depression, he's powered by all shades of anger. Be it pissing off the neighbors (rocking the house with a some Beastie Boys and Billy Squier samples on the Rick Rubin-produced party starter "Bezerk") or being threatened by critics (and his biggest ever, too, as "Bad Guy" revisits the MM LP character "Stan" via his revenge-obsessed brother Matthew), it all feeds into his super nova, and it’s a unique spectacle when it explodes. It does so gloriously on the stately arena rap anthem "Survival," which injects the listener with martial beats and a pre-game pep talk worth hearing. "Asshole" takes the decidedly low road to destruction, slapping girls "off the mechanical bull, at a tractor pull" while using controversy to make the front page, then offering the idea that he's "white America's mirror, so don't feel awkward or weird," because there's no sense in leaving the sewer if you don't crawl out enlightened. Love it or hate it, nourishing his same old murder fantasies is what drives Eminem to make the vital music found here, and yet there's room for polished and clever frivolity on the album. The grand "Love Game" with Kendrick Lamar whips a Wayne Fontana "Game of Love"-sample into a thrilling swagger cut, while "So Far…" re-edits Joe Walsh's "Life's Been Good" so the Madden and MP3 generation can also understand the sweet irony of mansions filled with Kool-Aid-stained couches. Silly, manipulated voices and all, "The Monster" with Rihanna offers insight with its "I get along with the voices inside my head" attitude, then "Headlights" ups the game and offers mom an apology, referencing his earlier hit "Cleaning Out My Closet" and explaining it as an angry and irresponsible moment. Funny thing is, most of the best moments on MM LP2 are just as angry, and just as irresponsible, but like "Closet," this is the tortured soul and self-reliance ninja known as Eminem at his very best.© David Jeffries /TiVo

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After centering himself with the confessional 2010 release Recovery, Eminem entered his forties while watching his beloved city of Detroit literally go bankrupt. The cover here displays this descent with an updated picture of the rapper's teenage home, first featured on the MM LP of 2000 but now boarded up, and yet this 8 Mile child cares much more about the present than the past, as this vicious, infectious, hilarious triumph is no nostalgia trip, just the 2013 version of Marshall the experienced maverick on a tear, dealing with the current state of events and kicking up dust with his trademark maniac attack while effortlessly juggling his over-40 wisdom with stuff you'd slap a teenager for saying. Key cut "Rap God" is the quintessential track as it blasts out homophobic cut-downs and other inexcusable lyrics, because Marshall's the "Dale Earnhardt of the trailer park," but "I still rap like I'm on my Pharoahe Monch grind," and suddenly his Stan Lee-like origin story begins to take shape. Marshall is a super villain so familiar with hate and depression, he's powered by all shades of anger. Be it pissing off the neighbors (rocking the house with a some Beastie Boys and Billy Squier samples on the Rick Rubin-produced party starter "Bezerk") or being threatened by critics (and his biggest ever, too, as "Bad Guy" revisits the MM LP character "Stan" via his revenge-obsessed brother Matthew), it all feeds into his super nova, and it’s a unique spectacle when it explodes. It does so gloriously on the stately arena rap anthem "Survival," which injects the listener with martial beats and a pre-game pep talk worth hearing. "Asshole" takes the decidedly low road to destruction, slapping girls "off the mechanical bull, at a tractor pull" while using controversy to make the front page, then offering the idea that he's "white America's mirror, so don't feel awkward or weird," because there's no sense in leaving the sewer if you don't crawl out enlightened. Love it or hate it, nourishing his same old murder fantasies is what drives Eminem to make the vital music found here, and yet there's room for polished and clever frivolity on the album. The grand "Love Game" with Kendrick Lamar whips a Wayne Fontana "Game of Love"-sample into a thrilling swagger cut, while "So Far…" re-edits Joe Walsh's "Life's Been Good" so the Madden and MP3 generation can also understand the sweet irony of mansions filled with Kool-Aid-stained couches. Silly, manipulated voices and all, "The Monster" with Rihanna offers insight with its "I get along with the voices inside my head" attitude, then "Headlights" ups the game and offers mom an apology, referencing his earlier hit "Cleaning Out My Closet" and explaining it as an angry and irresponsible moment. Funny thing is, most of the best moments on MM LP2 are just as angry, and just as irresponsible, but like "Closet," this is the tortured soul and self-reliance ninja known as Eminem at his very best.© David Jeffries /TiVo

After 15 years at the helm of British rock legends Queen, singer Freddie Mercury finally released his first solo album, Mr. Bad Guy, while the band was on hiatus in 1985. As Queen's vocal signature and creative leader, it was only natural that many aspects of the group's sound would carry over into Mercury's solo work; however, the frontman still does a commendable job of stretching into uncharted territory. The synthesizers of "Let's Turn It On" announce that Queen's typical guitar heaviness will be conspicuously absent throughout the album, while extravagance will be at an all-time high. "I Was Born to Love You," the album's leadoff single, elevates '70s disco and '80s dance influences to a level of blatant pop silliness that Queen would never dare approach. Mercury also combines his acoustic piano playing with synthesizer-driven backing tracks for the beautifully dramatic "Made in Heaven" and "Your Kind of Lover," which transforms from a simple lounge number (piano and singer) into a Latin-flavored pop workout. The singer's talent for complex and original arrangements also yields multifaceted pieces like "Man Made Paradise," with its Queen-like chorused opera vocals and Brian May-esque guitar soloing, and the daring, self-mocking title track, which combines a sinister bass motif, playful piano tinkling, and even big-band horn arrangements. Other winners such as "There Must Be More to Life Than This," "Living on My Own," and "Love Me Like There's No Tomorrow" help make this an outstanding record from start to finish. [The Hollywood Records reissue (under the title The Great Pretender) omits some tracks and tampers with the overall original mix.]© Eduardo Rivadavia /TiVo

From out of nowhere, Fabolous swooped onto the hip-hop scene in summer 2001 with this big-money debut album and a sure-fire hit ("Can't Deny It"). It also didn't hurt that Fabolous' rhymes happen to fit right in the with the zeitgeist of the moment, exhibiting somewhat of an East Coast variation of the bling bling style synonymous with Southern rap. Besides Jay-Z's occasional departure into materialism and/or hedonism à la "I Just Wanna Love U," the East Coast didn't really have a young, icy player -- at least not since the popular downfall of Bad Boy following the Notorious B.I.G.'s death. So if all this sounds a bit calculated, that's probably because it is. The flagship for DJ Clue's Desert Storm label, Fabolous is targeted at a specific niche, and he's well positioned. You know this before even hearing the music, just by glancing over the credits: big-money, of-the-moment producers like the Neptunes, Rockwilder, and Timbaland drop beats, and big-name, all-over-the-airwaves rappers/vocalists like Ja Rule, Lil' Mo, Jagged Edge, and Nate Dogg contribute some hooks -- these are can't-miss artists capable of propelling an unknown like Fabolous to overnight stardom. And that's exactly how it worked, thanks to the Rick Rock-produced, Nate Dogg-graced "Can't Deny It," a song that conveniently lifts a trademark 2Pac line for its hook ("I can't deny it, I'm a f*ckin' ridah," from "Ambitionz as a Ridah"). As calculated as it may be, it's an irresistible hook; unfortunately, the remainder of the album isn't nearly as alluring.© Jason Birchmeier /TiVo

“We are not serious when we are 17.” But Billie Eilish has all the marks of a serious young lady and someone who we should indeed take seriously. At the age of sixteen she released the noteworthy Don’t Smile at Me, an EP created with the help of her older brother, Finneas O’Connell. The EP is comprised of the singles Copycat, Bellyache and Ocean Eyes and was posted two years earlier on Soundcloud when Eilish was just 14 years old. Critics hailed her music due to its depiction of a lost adolescent with bleached hair, dressed in oversized sweaters. With the album When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go? and its strange title and shocking cover, Eilish and her dark hair flaunt their more obscure side. One is immediately struck with how well polished Finneas O’Connell’s production is after an intro in which Eilish jokingly mocks her brother for his Invisalign (a kind of invisible dental brace). The first track Bad Guy features an EDM beat which contrasts with the dreaminess of the subsequent Xanny. The rest of the album follows this trend, weaving together both harsh and soft songs combined with the mature lyrics of a girl who was diagnosed with Tourette’s at the age of 11 and speaks of Xanax and young girls descent into a hellish existence. In this mix of gloomy pop and creepy trap beats, Eilish excels. A real eye-opener. © Charlotte Saintoin/Qobuz

Arriving after the unexpected blast of raw energy that was 2001's Sweet Tea, 2003's Blues Singer could idealistically be seen as the acoustic flip side of that high-voltage, raw electric blues. Like Sweet Tea, Blues Singer is supposed to exist deep down within the Delta blues tradition, only finding Buddy Guy armed with an acoustic guitar and the occasional minimal accompaniment; it's even recorded at the same Mississippi studio that gave its name to the 2001 platter and is helmed by the same producer, Dennis Herring. If only it were that simple! Instead of being an extension or a mirror image of its predecessor, this record is a sleepy comedown from an exhilarating peak. Where Sweet Tea was filled with unpredictable song choices, this plays it safe, hauling out such familiar items as "Hard Time Killing Floor," "Crawlin' Kingsnake," "I Love the Life I Live," and "Sally Mae." And while this retains Jimbo Mathus on guitar, when other musicians pop up, it's not the lively Fat Possum crew, it's studio pros like Jim Keltner, or guest shots by superstars Eric Clapton and B.B. King. While this does afford listeners the rare opportunity to hear B.B. on acoustic, it gives the affair the audience-pleasing veneer that weighed down his mid-'90s efforts. Plus, when it comes right down to it, Guy simply is off on this record, with lazy, mannered vocals and by the book guitar. Despite a few good acoustic duet sessions with Junior Wells, acoustic blues is not really Guy's forte, and the highly disappointing Blues Singer illustrates exactly why.© Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo

After the disastrous full-band heavy metal project of Sex & Religion, Steve Vai returned to recording solo with Alien Love Secrets. It's a moodier, more atmospheric collection than his masterpiece, Passion and Warfare, which makes it slightly revelatory. With the new sonic textures, the guitarist again demonstrates his fluid technique, which manages to never become completely mechanical.© Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo