New Recordings

Pink Friday

(Cash Money ***)

nolead ends Establishing herself as the go-to female guest rapper, with scene-stealing verses on songs by Usher, Ludacris, Trey Songz, Christina Aguilera, and, most recently and impressively, Kanye West's "Monster," cartoonishly costumed, Trinidadian-

American emcee Nicki Minaj has appeared on 15 - 15! - cuts that have reached the Billboard Top 100 in the last year.

It's easier, however, to drop in and steal the show than it is to sustain a personal vision that's about more than how awesome you are.

Minaj has plenty of moves. She sings serviceably on the choruses of several of the softer, less compelling Pink Friday tunes, and she has an army of alter egos at her disposal. Among them is the attack dog Roman Zolanski, into whose persona she steps on "Roman's Revenge." That's a vicious back-and-forth with Eminem in which she takes a familiar Slim Shady tactic: picking on somebody not really equipped to fight back, in this case her former idol, Lil' Kim. Pink Friday is a bit of an all-over-the-place mess, but with assistance from Rihanna, Drake, and will.i.am, it still offers a selection of profane pleasures to pick and choose from.

- Dan DeLuca

nolead begins Kid Rock
nolead ends nolead begins Born Free
nolead ends nolead begins (Atlantic ***)

nolead ends Reportedly born of conversations between the Kid and über-producer Rick Rubin, Born Free is meant to show off Rock's lyrical love for his hard-luck hometown, Detroit. But the album also finds Rock (like Rubin) transitioning away from metal-crunching hip-hop and his usual boyish brand of mussed-up, self-referential cussin' and sputtering. They've replaced much of Rock's raucous backing ensemble, Twisted Brown Truckers, with studio vets. They've also emphasized the singer's classic-rock affection for a sound as smooth as barrel-aged bourbon on languidly pastoral country-blues cuts such as "Purple Sky." Rock sneaks in lowdown, dirty riff-rock ("God Bless Saturday") and keening hillbilly hip-hop ("Care," with Martina McBride and T.I.). But mostly there's reverence for home ("Flying High") and hometown heroes such as Bob Seger, whose rugged AOR inspiration ripples throughout. Kid even manages to find respect for his own voice as he croons low and sultry on "When It Rains" and angelically high on "For the First Time in a Long Time." It's a fine album - four stars for most, three for the Kid.

- A.D. Amorosi

nolead begins Robyn
nolead ends nolead begins Body Talk
nolead ends nolead begins (Cherry Tree/Interscope ***1/2)

nolead ends Swedish electro-pop artist Robyn set out to release a trilogy of albums in 2010. Body Talk Pt. 1 came out in June, Body Talk Pt. 2 in September, and the final installment, Body Talk, in November. This latest album features 15 tracks, with 10 culled from the previous two releases, and the addition of five new songs. Given Robyn's decade-long reputation for creating dance-pop hits, it's unsurprising that Body Talk is an endless supply of made-for-the-club hits, replete with modulating synth chords, anthemic choruses, oomphing bass beats, and memorable lyrics about love, hurt, and robots. What is surprising is the strength of the entire album. Her combination of '90s club, British grime, reggae, and gangsta rap (courtesy of an appearance by Snoop Dogg) makes each song surprising, engaging, and unique.

- Katherine Silkaitis

nolead begins Girl Talk
nolead ends nolead begins All Day
nolead ends nolead begins (Illegal Art ***1/2)

nolead ends Gregg Gillis, a.k.a. Girl Talk, specializes in mashing together the best bits of popular songs from the last 40-odd years into supersaturated, nonstop, ecstatic dance mixes. All Day, available for free download at http://illegal-art.net/allday, follows the blueprint of 2006's Night Ripper and 2008's Feed The Animals, although it's even more dense with samples. It's relentless. Since it opens with Black Sabbath's "War Pigs" (layered with Ludacris' "Move Bitch") and ends 71 minutes later with John Lennon's "Imagine" (spliced with Rich Boy's "Drop"), All Day might seem to have a political subtext. But Gillis' goals (aside from flouting fair-use laws) are less intellectual. He just wants to have fun, and he finds it in R-rated raps from Jay-Z, Waka Flocka Flame, and Lil Wayne and in instantly recognizable hooks from the Ramones, Arcade Fire, and Bruce Springsteen, among more than 300 others. All Day is perfect for the instant-gratification generation: it's an exhausting, dizzying sugar-rush.

- Steve Klinge

My Kinda Party

(Broken Bow **1/2)

nolead ends Jason Aldean's kind of party takes place just outside town, where his "redneck Romeo" can find a "tan-legged Juliet." It's a "Country Boy's World," to use one of the song titles, and Aldean revels in it.

And why not? That country-and-proud-of-it approach has helped make the strapping singer a star, even if the depictions of rural and small-town life he sings about (he doesn't write them) tend to have an earnest, workmanlike quality short on real personality - much like the pumped-up rock that passes for country throughout the album. There's also the dreaded power ballad, "Don't You Wanna Stay," with Kelly Clarkson, and on "Dirt Road Anthem" the country boy even raps the verses, which is as ridiculous as it sounds.

When he gets a good song, however, Aldean shows he can dig deeper, whether wallowing in the alienation of "Church Pew or Bar Stool" or ruminating on loss in "The Heartache That Don't Stop Hurting" or "Texas Was You." There just aren't enough of those moments among the 15 cuts here.

- Nick Cristiano

Flute/Guitar

(Dreambox Media ***)

nolead ends This brash duet recording finds two pros hanging out on new turf. Denis DiBlasio is perhaps better known as baritone saxophonist, but the director of Rowan University's jazz department (and formerly Maynard Ferguson's music director) holds forth on flute with fellow Rowan faculty member Brian Betz on acoustic guitar.

The eight originals - six by DiBlasio - create their own worlds. Sometimes it's a sassy and bluesy groove, as on DiBlasio's "Jackson Square." Other times, it's a more mellow vibe, as on Betz's winsome "Baby Bree."

DiBlasio and Betz are pretty expressive in either mode, and they reach high. DiBlasio's haunting "In Pieces" is dedicated to his father's long struggle with Alzheimer's.

- Karl Stark

Miranda Cuckson, violin; Blair McMillen, piano

(Vanguard Classics ***1/2)

nolead ends In his typically uncompromising manner, composer Michael Hersch collects his violin chamber works - all of which emotionally go for broke but in different ways - onto a single disc, no matter how heavy-going it might initially seem. All three works - Fourteen Pieces, the wreckage of flowers, and Five Fragments - come from a period (2003-2007) when Hersch was writing intense but tiny micromovements. Fourteen Pieces, for example, has 14 movements in 31 minutes. Also, some of these pieces hail from a period when he was diagnosed with cancer (successfully treated), which means that the music's anguish comes from a specific, tangible place.

But unlike similarly terse, dissonant works by the late Gyorgy Kurtag, Hersch supplies accompanying poetic fragments by Primo Levi and Czeslaw Milosz that give the ear a needed compass in his wintry journeys. In their own way, the words are as hot an experience as the music. Those who follow Hersch's work closely might be slightly let down in light of recent pieces such as Last Autumn, in which the composer surpassed himself. But the performances are completely up to the often-explosive demands of the music, and the album comes with a considerable bonus: 12 pages of artwork by Nicholas Cairns - ink and paper drawings, similarly abstract, that make the set a complete experience, though one defined almost entirely by what you bring to it.

- David Patrick Stearns