New albums: Miguel; 'Nina Revisited'; 'Dope' soundtrack; Ratings: **** Excellent, *** Good, ** Fair, * Poor

Miguel

Wildheart

(RCA ***)

nolead ends Proud to be iconoclastic, Miguel Jontel Pimentel explains himself on "What's Normal Anyway?", the seventh track on Wildheart, the Los Angeles polymorphous and musically adventurous love man's third album. He describes himself as "too proper for the black kids, too black for the Mexicans, too square to be a hood. . . . What's normal anyway?" Miguel, who moved past the straight-ahead R&B of his 2010 debut album, All I Want Is You, to open up to rock and other influences on 2012's Kaleidoscope Dream, is as good an example of the benefits of refusing musical limitations as anyone on the pop charts. The Prince-influenced, often dirty-minded Wildheart is an ode to the sleaze and beauty of Los Angeles and takes a NSFW detour to the porn hub of the San Fernando Valley. But it also works as a search for identity and an exploration of sociocultural in-betweenness. "I never feel I belong," the 30-year-old genre-blender sings. "I wanna feel I belong." This album does not peak as high as Kaleidoscope Dream, and neither the featured cameo by Dogg Pound rapper Kurupt on "NWA" nor that of Lenny Kravitz on "Face the Sun" bring added value. Still, the place Miguel belongs is in the company of the most compelling pop personalities working today.

- Dan DeLuca

nolead begins Various Artists
nolead ends nolead begins Nina Revisited . . . A Tribute
to Nina Simone
nolead ends nolead begins (Sony ***)

nolead ends This album is the companion piece to the Netflix documentary What Happened, Ms. Simone?, about the life of singular singer and pianist Nina Simone in the context of the civil-rights movement of the 1960s. It deserves attention, on at least two counts.

First, it recasts songs written and covered by Simone by contemporary acts such as Usher, Mary J. Blige, jazz man Gregory Porter, and Philadelphia R&B singer Jazmine Sullivan. A superb example that resonates in America's particularly fraught moment in race relations in 2015 is Sullivan's take on "Baltimore," the Randy Newman song about the Charm City where "it's hard, just to live." The song was a part of Simone's repertoire. And why no one thought to cover "Mississippi Goddamn," Simone's angriest, most arresting song, is an unanswered question.

The second newsworthy element about Nina Revisited is that it was executive-produced and contains five songs by Ms. Lauryn Hill. The former Fugee hasn't released a studio album in 17 years, but she's clearly energized by the opportunity to honor one of her heroes. She raps over Simone's "I've Got Life," and she turns chanteuse en Francais on "Ne Me Quitte Pas." And the dramatic interpretation of "Black Is the Color of My True Love's Hair" is one of Nina Revisited's three high points, along with Alice Smith's hypnotic take on Screaming Jay Hawkins' "I Put A Spell On You" and the lone track by Simone herself, Billy Taylor's "I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel to Be Free," which closes out the album with inimitable, unbowed spirit.

- Dan DeLuca

nolead begins Various Artists, curated by Pharrell Williams
nolead ends nolead begins Dope: Music from
the Motion Picture
nolead ends nolead begins (Columbia ***)

nolead ends When an artist gets an opportunity to curate a soundtrack (let alone executive-produce the movie), he or she has a chance to do more than simply pick other people's hits. For the soundtrack of Dope, set in South Central Los Angeles in the midst of nerd culture and '90s hip-hop, Über-producer/singer Pharrell Williams did pluck period smashes, songs from such standout acts as Digable Planets and A Tribe Called Quest. But Pharrell did more: He inhabited the minds and souls of this ominous comedy's lead characters, the fictional hip-hop/punk band Awreeoh (pronounced "Oreo") - and wrote, produced, and played songs shaped by the film's circumstances and speaking, singing, and rapping in the characters' voices.

It's a bold, funky move. Soul-rap-rocking numbers such as "Can't Bring Me Down," "Go Head," and the singsong "It's My Turn Now" sound radically reminiscent of N.E.R.D., Pharrell's much-missed band with his Neptunes production partner, Chad Hugo. Best of show is the hard-hearted "Don't Get Deleted" by Awreeoh. If you close your eyes, it sounds like a mix of N.E.R.D. hits "Lapdance" and "She Wants to Move." Pharrell even uses songs by other Dope actors, such as George Ramirez (a.k.a. Kap G) and Zoë Kravitz (her band LolaWolf) as part of the mix. Nice.

- A.D. Amorosi

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Tyrese, Black Rose; R5, Sometime Last Night; Ardrian Younge & Ghostface Killah, Twelve Reasons To Die II; Ry Cooder, Broadcast from the PlantEndText