Black Eyed Peas - The Beginning (Deluxe Edition)

It's not often these days that a new album gets past my cold hard exterior of cynicism and weary indifference to actually make me feel something. The Beginning, the latest from Black Eyed Peas manages it though for all the wrong reasons. It's not that I've ever been a fan of theirs, but at least in the past you could count on Will.I.Am and his other preposterously named cohorts to come up with the odd good hit; Shut Up is a decent song, My Humps was ridiculous but undeniably catchy, and it all seemed to come together on I Gotta Feelin. But The Beginning falls so far short of even my modest expectations that I found myself getting really wound up just listening to it.

It's not just the sense of talent being wasted, but the obvious lack of finesse or any sort of care gone in to the process of making this album. This hasn't been crafted, just thrown together and packaged up, shamefully, into standard, Deluxe and Super Deluxe editions, all conveniently available in time for the lucrative Christmas market. Black Eyed Peas see themselves as some sort of 'future hip-hop' group, which apparently means an abundance of over-compressed sounding electro/dance beats, robotic one-paced rapping, and practically every line spoken or sung either cut to pieces, or autotuned beyond recognition. Kanye has a hell of a lot to answer for if this is the future of hip-hop.

Chali 2na - Fish Market 2

Fish Market 2 is, unsurprisingly, the follow up to 2009's Fish Market, from ex-Jurassic 5 and Ozomatli member Chali 2na. It's the bass-voiced emcee's third solo LP, and Fish Market 2 is a sprawling 22 track tapestry, mixing up club bangers, with some jazzier J5-sounding cuts and even a dancehall track. There's also few skits chucked in for good measure, but (as usual with skits) they don't add much.

Rakaa - Crown of Thorns

Emcee with the Los Angeles-based underground hip-hop group Dilated Peoples, Rakaa Iriscience released his first solo effort, Crown of Thorns, in the UK this week. There's been minimum fanfare or press coverage surrounding the release, which has gone unnoticed by all except dedicated hip-hop fans, but listening to the 13 tracks on Crown of Thorns there's a good chance that this could find an audience through word of mouth alone. Rakaa is joined by some of the underground's big hitters too, including Mad Lion, KRS-One and the unmistakeable baritone of Chali 2na.