Becoming an adult ultimately means accepting one's imperfections, unimportance, and mortality, but that doesn't mean we stop striving for the ideal, a search that's so at the center of our very being that our greatest works of art celebrate it, and often amplify it. Anguish and despair rightfully earn more Grammys, Emmys, Tonys, and Pulitzer Prizes than sweetness and light ever do, but West Coast rapper Kendrick Lamar is already on elevated masterwork number two, so expect his version of the sobering truth to sound like a party at points. He's aware, as Bilal sings here, that "Shit don't change 'til you get up and wash your ass," and don't it feel good? The sentiment is universal, but the viewpoint on his second LP is inner-city and African-American, as radio regulars like the Isley Brothers (sampled to perfection during the key track "I"), George Clinton (who helps make "Wesley's Theory" a cross between "Atomic Dog" and Dante's Inferno), and Dr. Dre (who literally phones his appearance in) put the listener in Lamar's era of Compton, just as well as Lou Reed took us to New York and Brecht took us to Weimar Republic Berlin. These G-funky moments are incredibly seductive, which helps usher the listener through the album's 80-minute runtime, plus its constant mutating (Pharrell productions, spoken word, soul power anthems, and sound collages all fly by, with few tracks ending as they began), much of it influenced, and sometimes assisted by, producer Flying Lotus and his frequent collaborator Thundercat. "u" sounds like an MP3 collection deteriorating, while the broken beat of the brilliant "Momma" will challenge the listener's balance, and yet, Lamar is such a prodigiously talented and seductive artist, his wit, wisdom, and wordplay knock all these stray molecules into place. Survivor's guilt, realizing one's destiny, and a Snoop Dogg performance of Doggystyle caliber are woven among it all; plus, highlights offer that Parliament-Funkadelic-styled subversion, as "The Blacker the Berry" ("The sweeter the juice") offers revolutionary slogans and dips for the hip. Free your mind, and your ass will follow, and at the end of this beautiful black berry, there's a miraculous "talk" between Kendrick and the legendary 2Pac, as the brutalist trailblazer mentors this profound populist. To Pimp a Butterfly is as dark, intense, complicated, and violent as Picasso's Guernica, and should hold the same importance for its genre and the same beauty for its intended audience.© David Jeffries /TiVo

Steppenwolf entered the studio for their recording debut with a lot of confidence -- based on a heavy rehearsal schedule before they ever got signed -- and it shows on this album, a surprisingly strong debut album from a tight hard rock outfit who was obviously searching for a hook to hang their sound on. The playing is about as loud and powerful as anything being put out by a major record label in 1968, though John Kay's songwriting needed some development before their in-house repertory would catch up with their sound and musicianship. On this album, the best material came from outside the ranks of the active bandmembers: "Born to Be Wild" by ex-member Mars Bonfire, which became not only a chart-topping high-energy anthem for the counterculture (a status solidified by its use in Dennis Hopper's movie Easy Rider the following year), but coined the phrase heavy metal, thus giving a genre-specific name to the brand of music that the band played (and which was already manifesting itself in the work of bands like Vanilla Fudge and the just-emerging Led Zeppelin); the Don Covay soul cover "Sookie, Sookie," which, as a single by the new group, actually got played on some soul stations until they found out that Steppenwolf was white; two superb homages to Chess Records, in the guise of "Berry Rides Again," written (though "adapted" might be a better word) by Kay based on the work of Chuck Berry, and the Willie Dixon cover "Hoochie Coochie Man"; and Hoyt Axton's "The Pusher," an anti-drug song turned into a pounding six-minute tour de force by the band. The rest, apart from the surprisingly lyrical rock ballad "A Girl I Knew," is by-the-numbers hard rock that lacked much except a framework for their playing; only "The Ostrich" ever comes fully to life among the other originals, but the songs would catch up with the musicianship the next time out.© Bruce Eder /TiVo

This is the place to start listening to Chuck Berry. The Great Twenty-Eight was a two-LP, single CD compilation that emerged during the early '80s, amid a brief period in which the Chess catalog was in the hands of the Sugar Hill label, a disco-oriented outfit that later lost the catalog to MCA. It has proved to be one of the most enduring of all compilations of Berry's work. Up until the release of this disc, every attempt at a compilation had either been too sketchy (the 1964 Greatest Hits album on Chess) or too demanding for the casual listener (the three Golden Decade double-LP sets), and this was the first set to find a happy medium between convenience and thoroughness. Veteran listeners will love this CD even if they learn little from it, while neophytes will want to play it to death. All of the cuts come from Berry's first nine years in music, including all of the major singles as well as relatively minor hits such as "Come On" (which was more significant in the history of rock & roll in its cover version performed by the Rolling Stones as their debut release). The sound is decent throughout (surprisingly, except for "Come On," which has some considerable noise), although it is considerably outclassed by the most recent round of remasterings. In the decades since its release, there have been more comprehensive collections of Berry's work, but this is the best single disc, if one can overlook the relatively lo-fi digital sound.© Bruce Eder /TiVo

45 years after his first album, Stanley Clarke shows that he is still an untouchable virtuoso on the bass, electric and acoustic guitar, with an artistic vision that is completely his own. Supported by friends as varied as rapper Doug E. Fresh and trumpet player Mark Isham and accompanied by a band featuring Cameron Graves and Beka Gochiashvili on keyboards and Mike Mitchell on drums, the bass ace unfurls all his know-how on this record, whether he’s throwing himself into a torrid funky swerve or revisiting a Bach suite! There’s an impressive eclecticism throughout, though this former member of Return to Forever never ceases to be himself. What’s more, Stanley Clarke doesn't forget to pay tribute to some recently deceased colleagues: George Duke, Prince, Leon "Ndugu" Chancler, Darryl Brown, Tom Petty, Chuck Berry, Larry Coryell and Al Jarreau. © Clotilde Maréchal/Qobuz

There have been many, many Chuck Berry compilations released by Chess over the years, but as of the spring of 2006, there was no comprehensive single-disc set in print; there was the double-disc 2005 set Gold, which itself was a retitled reissue of 2000's Anthology, but the classic comp The Great Twenty-Eight was long out of print, and nothing had replaced it until the 2006 release of The Definitive Collection. This generous 30-track selection offers nearly everything that was on The Great Twenty-Eight and in nearly the same sequence -- "Brown Eyed Handsome Man" and "Roll Over Beethoven" are swapped, for instance, but it's not really a noticeable change. "Bye Bye Johnny" is the only song missing from The Great Twenty-Eight, which is not a huge omission, especially since it's been replaced with two great singles, "You Never Can Tell" and "Promised Land." "My Ding-A-Ling" is also here and, while it is a worse song than "Bye Bye Johnny," it was Chuck's only number one single, so its inclusion makes sense -- and it hardly sinks a collection that is by far the best, most comprehensive single-disc Chuck Berry set yet assembled. Sure, there are some great Berry songs that are absent, but all the major songs are here; plus, if you need more than 30 songs, turn to either Gold or The Chess Box. If you want a single-disc best-of collection of all of Chuck's finest, this is the one to get.© Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo

Over the course of his career, Matt Berry has proven to be an impressive mimic of various styles on the vintage pop/rock color wheel. Whether he's romping through proggy folk-rock, digging deep into singer/songwriter tropes, exploring psychedelic pop, or conjuring up synth-heavy soundscapes, he's not only been able to re-create sounds, but has imbued them with enough of his own melodic sensibility to make his albums consistently feel relevant and alive, not fusty old museum pieces. That being said, it's absolutely no surprise that he's more than up to the challenge presented on his 2023 album Simplicity. One of the main labels involved with the British library music industry, KPM, offered Berry a chance to make a record in the vein of their late-'60s sounds, and he leapt at it. He came up with 11 instrumentals designed to be used as background ambiance for chase scenes and montages, themes for sporting contests, transitions between segments in documentary films, or any other place someone might need some groovy music. Working with ace drummer Craig Blundell as he has done a few times before, Berry is able to trot out items from his collection of gear, ranging from Mellotron and xylophone to 12-string guitar and electric piano, mixing and matching them like a painter with a gimlet eye for exactly the right shading. Not only does he do his usual whiz-bang job of whipping up retro delights, there's also a strut and snap to the tracks that lets the listener know that this is a labor of love, not music cranked out by people slogging, however delightfully, through their day jobs. There's a twinkling lightness to tracks like "Top Brass" and "Rising Bass" that wouldn't be there if Berry was just painting by numbers. The tracks with slightly more complicated arrangements, like the moodier "Get the Scene" or "Telescopic," show how much he has grown as a crafter of sound, and they have a richness not often associated with this style of music. The couple of more lightweight songs are just as much fun; one can picture Berry grinning as he cranks up the wah-wah pedal on "Too Many Hats" or settles into a phased sunshine soul groove on "Good Sport." He has obviously done his homework on library music and KPM, and it's equally clear that they did their homework on him as this is a perfect match of brand-new and retro. Simplicity would both fit in perfectly in the label's original run and stand as one of the best things they had to offer. It's yet another triumph for Berry as he continues to trip merrily through music history like a brilliant minstrel, spreading joy and sunshine in his wake at every step.© Tim Sendra /TiVo

This album puts the lie to the popular myth that Chuck Berry's music started to fade away around the same time that the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, et al. emerged covering his stuff. His songwriting is as strong here as ever -- side one is packed with now-familiar fare like "Little Marie" (a sequel to "Memphis, Tennessee"), "No Particular Place to Go," "Promised Land," and "You Never Can Tell," but even filler tracks like "Our Little Rendezvous" and "You Two" are among Berry's better album numbers, the latter showing off the slightly softer pop/R&B side to his music that many listeners forget about. Side two includes a bunch of tracks, including the hard-rocking "Go Bobby Soxer" and the even better "Brenda Lee," the slow blues "Things I Used to Do" (with a killer guitar break), and the instrumentals "Liverpool Drive" and "Night Beat," one fast and the other slow, that never get reissued or compiled anywhere.© Bruce Eder /TiVo

If you had to sweat all of Chuck Berry's early albums on Chess (and some, but not all, of his subsequent greatest-hits packages), this would be the one to own. The song lineup is exemplary, cobbling together classics like "Maybellene," "Carol," "Sweet Little Rock & Roller," "Little Queenie," "Roll Over Beethoven," "Around and Around," "Johnny B. Goode," and "Almost Grown." With the addition of the Latin-flavored "Hey Pedro," the steel guitar workout "Blues for Hawaiians," "Anthony Boy," and "Jo Jo Gunne," this serves as almost a mini-greatest-hits package in and of itself. While this may be merely a collection of singles and album ballast (as were most rock & roll LPs of the 1950s and early '60s), it ends up being the most perfectly realized of Chuck Berry's career.© Cub Koda /TiVo

4 stars out of 5 -- "[H]is is a half-lit world of breezy landscapes, gothic weirdness and bonkers lyrics." © TiVo

Becoming an adult ultimately means accepting one's imperfections, unimportance, and mortality, but that doesn't mean we stop striving for the ideal, a search that's so at the center of our very being that our greatest works of art celebrate it, and often amplify it. Anguish and despair rightfully earn more Grammys, Emmys, Tonys, and Pulitzer Prizes than sweetness and light ever do, but West Coast rapper Kendrick Lamar is already on elevated masterwork number two, so expect his version of the sobering truth to sound like a party at points. He's aware, as Bilal sings here, that "Shit don't change 'til you get up and wash your ass," and don't it feel good? The sentiment is universal, but the viewpoint on his second LP is inner-city and African-American, as radio regulars like the Isley Brothers (sampled to perfection during the key track "I"), George Clinton (who helps make "Wesley's Theory" a cross between "Atomic Dog" and Dante's Inferno), and Dr. Dre (who literally phones his appearance in) put the listener in Lamar's era of Compton, just as well as Lou Reed took us to New York and Brecht took us to Weimar Republic Berlin. These G-funky moments are incredibly seductive, which helps usher the listener through the album's 80-minute runtime, plus its constant mutating (Pharrell productions, spoken word, soul power anthems, and sound collages all fly by, with few tracks ending as they began), much of it influenced, and sometimes assisted by, producer Flying Lotus and his frequent collaborator Thundercat. "u" sounds like an MP3 collection deteriorating, while the broken beat of the brilliant "Momma" will challenge the listener's balance, and yet, Lamar is such a prodigiously talented and seductive artist, his wit, wisdom, and wordplay knock all these stray molecules into place. Survivor's guilt, realizing one's destiny, and a Snoop Dogg performance of Doggystyle caliber are woven among it all; plus, highlights offer that Parliament-Funkadelic-styled subversion, as "The Blacker the Berry" ("The sweeter the juice") offers revolutionary slogans and dips for the hip. Free your mind, and your ass will follow, and at the end of this beautiful black berry, there's a miraculous "talk" between Kendrick and the legendary 2Pac, as the brutalist trailblazer mentors this profound populist. To Pimp a Butterfly is as dark, intense, complicated, and violent as Picasso's Guernica, and should hold the same importance for its genre and the same beauty for its intended audience.© David Jeffries /TiVo

It's clear from his music that Matt Berry is a dedicated record collector, the kind who gets deep into a given style and tries to track down everything possible that's worth hearing. Each album he's made sounds like the work of someone deep in the throes of a particular obsession: Kill the Wolf was British folk-rock, Music for Insomniacs was new age synthesizer music, Television Themes is pretty self-explanatory. His 2016 album The Small Hours did a fine job synthesizing his various influences into a gently psychedelic sound that touched on classic singer/songwriter and soft rock elements as well. 2020's Phantom Birds adds a healthy dose of Nashville Skyline-influenced country-rock to the mix, mostly replacing the vintage synths and trippy arrangements with pedal steel guitar and low-key strumming. Berry sounds right at home in these new surroundings; his drawling vocals fit the genre well and he mostly uses the style as a spice that folds into his musical stew without a problem. Tracks like "Moonlight Flit" and "That Yellow Bird," with their swooping pedal steels, vibraphone fills, and expansive arrangements, fall into the cosmic Americana category, mixing the traditional with the offbeat in ways that Gram Parsons would have surely appreciated. Berry definitely makes the most of the backing lyrically by telling some tall tales, lending wisdom, and generally projecting a sense of calm serenity over the proceedings. It's a little slicker and more straightforward overall than some of his earlier work. It might be the gliding pedal steel or the acoustic guitars that underpin most of the record, but Berry has rarely sounded this relaxed or at ease on record. The easy melodies and subtle singing of the title track is something new and very welcome; much of the rest of the album hits this same note of familiarity and growth, and it makes for a very satisfying listen. If Berry continues to progress and impress at this level, he might soon be known as a musician who does some acting instead of the other way around. © Tim Sendra /TiVo