Relish Spins

Rakim

The Seventh Seal

Label: SMC Recordings

If you like: Nas

Song to download: "How to Emcee"

In hip-hop, there are two eras -- before Rakim and after Rakim. And after Rakim, lyricism reigned supreme. Listen closely to any of your favorite rappers (Jay-Z, Mos Def, Nas), the ones who place a premium on hot punchlines and clever metaphors, and you will hear the influence of Rakim, the God MC, the master of the microphone.

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Eric B and Rakim blazed through the hearts of hip-hop fans with such hits as "Paid in Full" and "I Know You Got Soul," songs brimming with Eric B's hard-hitting beats and smooth soul samples. Rakim's gift to hip-hop was his use of complex internal rhymes and metaphors. He was a poet, and those who heard him knew it.

After four CDs, Eric B and Rakim broke up, and Rakim pursued a solo career, albeit one that has been very rocky (a highly anticipated collaboration with producer Dr. Dre fell apart because of creative differences). Now, with his third solo CD, The Seventh Seal, Rakim reminds us why he is considered one of the greatest of all time.

From the literal instructions on "How to Emcee" to the spiritual on "Holy Are U," Rakim uses his words to inform and entertain over boom-bap beats that sound as if they came out of the 1990s. The collaborations, fortunately, are few and far between, with the most well-known belonging to rapper Maino on "Walk These Streets."

The rest of the CD belongs to Rakim, whose fervor for wordplay is as strong as ever, that monotone voice flowing over and under and through the music, consistent and gritty.

Rakim, as is typical, blurs the line between abstract and concrete, heaven up there and hell down here. He balances the opposites, and never lets one overtake the other.

Eels

End Times

Label: Vagrant

If you like: John Cale, Wilco

Song to download: "A Line in the Dirt"

Everywhere Mark Oliver Everett looks, he sees something he doesn't like.

Whether it's the relationship dissolution that's at the heart of his latest album, End Times, or the scary state of affairs in our world that he layers atop his personal pain, there's little for Everett -- known as Eels or E -- to be happy about. Though the emotions here are mostly difficult, Everett leavens the hurt with shifting textures and tempos and humor.

"A Line in the Dirt" starts with one of the funniest opening lines in memory -- which sadly can't be reprinted here. The melancholy "In My Younger Days" is a meditation on midlife crises, and he retells the breakup against type in the upbeat rocker "Gone Man."

This is Everett's second album in six months, a rapid-fire output for an artist who had a four-year break between releases before Hombre Lobo came out over the summer. The albums cover similar thematic ground, but that's OK. We're just glad he's back.

Various Artists

Crazy Heart: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack

Label: New West

If you like: Townes Van Zandt

Song to download: "I Don't Know"

In the film Crazy Heart, actor Jeff Bridges plays a hard-drinking country singer struggling to maintain a career long after he's stopped having hits. The soundtrack leans on the bluer side of country music, ignoring modern country's slick surfaces for a compilation of classic country, acoustic blues and hard-bitten singer-songwriter fare.

Musical director T Bone Burnett cherry-picks hits by the Delmore Brothers, Waylon Jennings, George Jones, Louvin Brothers, Buck Owens and Kitty Wells to ground the soundtrack. He balances it with more recent tunes by Americana singer-songwriters (Ryan Bingham, Billy Joe Shaver, Townes Van Zandt, Lucinda Williams) and a blues legend (Lightnin' Hopkins). Then he works in original songs from the film, sung by Bridges or co-stars Robert Duvall and Colin Farrell.

The soundtrack comes in a limited edition with 23 songs or a regular 17-song version.

Spoon

Transference

Label: Merge

If you like: Sad, mad boys

Song to download: "Goodnight Laura"

Transference, the follow up to Spoon's 2007 effort Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga, is as driven and manic as its predecessor, if not somewhat more sour.

There are plenty of tracks that are signature Spoon, with uptempo staccato chords and singer Britt Daniel's sandpapery yelps. But Transference brings it down a notch with a less polished sound that comes across more like a demo, which gives it more of an organic feel.

"Who Makes Your Money?" challenges the appeal of the overproduced track. "Is Love Forever," echoes a chord progression that would solicit a smile from Queens of The Stone Age, but is arguably the best example of the standard Spoon track.

Many tracks are missives about heartbreak. "Written in Reverse" proclaims, "I wanna show you how I love you/ but there's nothing there."

"Nobody Gets Me but You," a fine-tuned treatise on social disenfranchisement, is an apt soundtrack for a down-on-your-luck, rainy afternoon -- sad, rambling, but hopeful still.