Atmosphere
"When Life Gives You Lemons, You Paint That Sh*t Gold"
(Rhymesayers Entertainment)

Rapper Slug and beatmaster Ant both change direction on this classy package (a bound book -- download that, suckers). Ant's shift is less auspicious: no samples. But the "Shoulda Known" synth groan is his catchiest hook in years, and most of the music he coaxes out of his Twin Cities g-s-d-etc. cohort is distinguished enough, especially given his partner's progress. Slug has always made more of self-examination than most cult celebs who work that shtick, and he shows them how on tracks like the well-named "Me." But he's even sharper empathizing with smaller-time losers. True, two of his angst victims are waitresses, the club-circuit version of the cab drivers who've been giving journalists man-on-the-street copy for generations -- how about slaves of telemarketing, or data entry? Nevertheless, the lost lives and loves he sketches are so painfully familiar they feel like truth. And Ant's homey beats enhance the illusion.

Be Your Own Pet
"Get Damaged"
(Universal/Ecstatic Peace)

They grow up so fast. Once a punky brat, Jemima Pearl now sounds like a punk broad -- like she might join the Donnas if that was a better job. But listen through the bigger voice and louder mix and you'll hear someone who's thinking all the time. Not about tunes -- that's Jonah's department, which he's getting better at. About consequences. Then it's on to "Food Fight!" and "Zombie Graveyard Party!" "Next year she'll be 21, look out world she wants to have fun," she shouts. Only actually, it's this year. June 20, in fact. Uh-oh.

Blitzen Trapper
"Wild Mountain Nation"
(Lidkercow Ltd)

From Portland -- no, silly, not the Maine one -- this third-time's-a-charm indie band gets through 13 songs in 34 minutes with no apparent rush, yet comes off frantic anyway. Their sprung rhythms and imploding guitars suggest the Band as much as Pavement only because the lyrics that break free of the clatter sing the praises of pastoral seclusion. So Portland. In all its urban greenery, or is it green urbanity?

Al Green
"Lay It Down"
(Blue Note)

Between producer ?uestlove's command of tradition, including cannier drums than Green has had since Al Jackson Jr. was taken from us, and the 62-year-old singer's skillfully tended chops, this sounded fine straight off. But the formula seemed slightly pat, and I didn't hear a "Call Me," much less a "Love and Happiness." So I put it away, came back, immersed, and noticed two things. 1) The first four or five tracks work as songs, the instant minor classic the one that clarifies a basic principle: "Your love is just for me/It's just for me/It's just for me, for me, for me/It's just for me." 2) No Jesus, which some count a failing, but not secular me. Except for the finale -- "Write this down if you can/I'm a cold, hard-working man," so I did -- here is that rare thing, a credible album entirely devoted to connubial bliss. True, Green spends more time supplicating than celebrating, and probably fabricated the whole scenario. But he knows his subject, and he doesn't need Jesus to lay it down.

Honeyhoney
"Loose Boots"
(Ironworks Music)

Five cannily crafted, forthrightly sexy songs by L.A. male-female duo. Guitarist Ben Jaffe is the serious talent, vox Suzanne Santo the reason to care. She sounds both footloose and ready to take her clothes off -- suffused with regret and desire at 22.

The Kills
"Midnight Boom"
(Domino)

Arithmetic notwithstanding, this combo of adult delinquent chick singer and guitar-wielding male enabler was always more Cramps or Yeah Yeah Yeahs than White Stripes. Outgrowing art-garage blues worship, they cop tunes, big up their sound, and spank basic rock beats. As vision, still somewhere between narrow and ignant. Yet not a boho archetype for nothing. Next time you're in a really bad mood, feel its power.

Lil Wayne
"Tha Carter III"
(Cash Money/Universal/Motown)

From the start you know this is no mixtape because it's clearer and more forceful. Every track attends to detail, with fun tricks like the chipmunk-chorused "Mr. Carter"'s sudden descent into screwed-and-chopped before Jay-Z comes in. But from the start Wayne worries about his image like a pop star, swearing he got shot for two songs running as if 50 was still worth a few bucks. Soon come the auto-T-Pained "Lollipop" follow-up "Got Money" and the soft slow jam "Comfortable," as pro forma as his laziest thug jobs back when he was little. So it's call the doctor -- "Dr. Carter" himself, a rap-ologist complete with post-Yiddish "acchh" who will soon lose two impatient patients to their fakeness and his own do-as-I-say malpractice, followed by the space-tripping "Phone Home" and the N.W.A-copping cop love of "Mrs. Officer." On "Let the Beat Build," Kanye compensates for "Comfortable" with an off-the-cuff fusion of grandiose and primitive. Also mixtape-worthy is the bonus disc, previously known as the download-only "The Leak" EP. Like the man says in the self-explanatory "I'm Me": "I know the game is crazy, it's more crazy than it's ever been/I'm married to that crazy bitch, call me Kevin Federline."

Lil Wayne
"The Drought Is Over 2: The Carter 3 Sessions"
(mixtape4u.com)

Title and label approximate. I prefer the other version of this ad hoc collection in my possession even though it slices the ends off tracks -- it's louder, with hotter unmatched songs. But I'm reviewing this because it's obtainable online even with mixtape4u.com now drawing a blank. Look above Wayne's name on the cover image for "The Empire," words that repeat in annoying voiceover ad infinitum; note also the Arabic three as opposed to the Roman numeral of the official release, which shares only a more casual "La La La" with this supposed leak. Skip it and you never hear the actually believable love plaint "What He Does," the in-their-face Beatles rip "Help," the celestially drugged-out "I Feel Like Dying," or, for instance, "I Know the Future": "Like a circle of knives/I got the sharpest flow around." Granted, maybe it's the jaggedest flow around, or the underground stream that slices through rock to move mountains. But superlatives apply. Snicker-snack, snicker-snack, he can't contain himself, the rare modern pop artist who says he's in it for money but always gives up the love rather than vice versa.