Returning after two years of absence in the music industry, Mims looks to build upon the early success of his popular single “This Is Why I’m Hot”, which initiated the rappers early career in 2007. Like his previous album, Mims presents listeners with one standout single, in this case “Move (If You Wanna)”, in efforts to generate more listeners for the rest of the album. But if for one second you think that “Guilt” is built just upon another one hit wonder, then you need to go back and at least give the first few songs a listen.

Track “On & On” is the first worthy song of the album, followed by the slow R&B cut “Love Rollercoaster”, which features a worthy chorus in “I’m so tired of playing love rollercoaster with you, cause my heart can’t take this drama you putting me through

.” Up next is Mim’s leads single “Move (If You Wanna)”, which is produced by Da Internz and features lots of high energy, yet for some reason seems to pale in quality when compared to “This Is Why I’m Hot”.

Slowing things down, Mims takes a look at daily struggles in track “One Day”, where he sings “All that’s left is struggle, is just you and I, so if you pray for me then I’ll pray for you, and we will come together, all it takes is two”. The rest of the album is a mix of songs, from the guitar-induced tracks “Chasing Sunshine” and “Rock ‘n Rollin”, to the pop song “One Last Kiss” which is far from memorable.

“Guilt” was released April 7 on iTunes (check it out here) and on Amazon (check it out here). While the album does exceed many listeners expectations when compared to his debut album “Music Is My Savior” and Mims does provide worthy tracks outside of his lead single “Move (If You Wanna), “Guilt” simply lacks versatility and club playing ability.

“Hood Love” is produced by Chris Styles and Marcus D’Tray and features Trey Songz, who is currently working on his own 2009 album “Ready”. Together the duo come together to create a feel-good single that features a memorable chorus and solid verses from Maino.

To start things off, Maino ensures his unchanging love for the hood with “Never go hollywood, let it be understood, that I’ll be in the hood, right where the strip is poppin”. Thankfully Maino keeps each subsequent verses just as smooth, and he does it all without any help from the Auto Tune that so many other rappers of today have felt the need to use excessively.

Later Maino and Trey Songz team up to provide a fairly catchy chorus, with Maino rapping “Yeah they love it when I come through, Rollin like a thug dude” and Trey adding his voice to his most prominent section of the single, in “I got em like ooh ooh ohh i get hood love, Ooh ooh ooh hood love”.

With a catchy chorus and smooth flow overall in “Hood Love”, Maino gives us a another hit single to enjoy before his upcoming album’s release. The single was released March 31 on iTunes (you can check it out here) and takes you a few steps back towards classic hip hop.

Rating: 4/5

The move follows Concord Music Group’s recent announcement that it has entered into an exclusive arrangement with the Ray Charles Foundation to develop the artist’s post-1960 catalog. On April 7th, Concord Records also released a 21-song anthology of hits titled Ray Charles — Genius: The Ultimate Ray Charles Collection. All songs have been digitally remastered from the original tapes.

Ray Charles — Genius: The Ultimate Ray Charles Collection chronicles the high points in Charles’ catalog. As noted jazz writer Don Heckman writes in his liner notes, “The first feeling that comes to mind after even a short glance at the titles included here is a sense of wonder. The diversity of the material is impressive in its own right.”

The album contains 21 of Charles’ biggest hits, each within its own unique history and meaning. Genius: The Ultimate Ray Charles Collection will be packaged in a handsome embossed digipack and presented with a 24-page collectors’ book of rare photos and notes.

Concord will release several other Ray Charles reissues this year including Modern Sounds in Country & Western Music, Volumes 1 & 2, The Genius Hits the Road, A Message From the People and Genius + Soul = Jazz & More.

Genius: The Ultimate Ray Charles Collection can be found on Amazon here and iTunes here.

Returning after four years and keen to show he’s still got it since releasing “Already Platinum”, Slim Thug has produced a steady reminder of his caliber, with many familiar topics of love and lust, while bringing in some newer sounds with main production from Mr. Lee and Jim Jonson. The album features a number of guests including Mike Jones, UGK, Scarface and Paul Wall to name a few.

“Boss of All Bosses” has its best tracks early on, starting with “I’m Back”, produced by Mr Lee, as Slim Thug devotes the track to convincing us that he doesn’t need rap to move forward, before nobly paying tribute to Mr Lee.

Next up, the lead single “I Run” features sampling from “I Ran (So Far Away)” by A Flock of Seagulls and is finely reworked by Jim Jonsin who employs a stirring synthesizer. The single peaked at No. 30 on the U.S. Billboard Rhythmic Top 40 chart and adds a real taste of diversity to the album.

Closely following is “Show Me Love”, an upbeat track featuring Mannie Fresh that warms up for “Smile” a song with even more musical levity that also appeals to the female fancy. Another stand out track is “Hard”, taking a sample from the soulful “Hard Knocks” by Marc Broussard and features Scarface in vintage style, while J-Dawg also makes an impact with his distinct verse.

“Boss of All Bosses” draws to an end with a marathon track, “Welcome 2 Houston”, which enlists almost every rapper Texas has ever produced, from UGK, Mike Jones and Chamillionaire to Trae and Mike D. Although unsurprisingly it doesn’t flow much, the backing pays tribute to Slim Thugs’ continuing rise around the south.

“Boss Of All Bosses” was released 24 March on iTunes (check it out here), marking an eternity since Slim Thugs’ last LP and showing he still has his flair after storming up to No. 2 on the U.S Billboard Top Rap Albums chart and No. 4 on the Top R&B/Hip Hop Albums chart.

Rating: 4/5

Flo Rida’s latest work delivers an album with several influences; recreating elements from a number other hits to combine classics with his lively style. Where “Mail On Sunday” was spearheaded by the hit “Low”, Flo Rida again has another chart topper on his second album with “Right Round”, causing the stir. The lead single, which features Ke$ha (who makes a second appearance on “Touch Me”) and peaked at No.1 on the U.S Billboard Hot 100 chart, recreates elements from the Dead or Alive classic “You Spin Me Round (Like a Record)” in production and some of the hooks.

“R.O.O.T.S” is crammed full of radio geared tracks, with banging beats such as on the catchy auto-tune heavy track “Jump”, featuring Nelly Furtado, and “Gotta Get It (Dancer)”, which recreates elements from Tina Turner’s “Private Dancer”. The album beams with sexy rhymes such as on the second release “Shone” (standing for “action”) featuring Pleasure P, raunchy lyrics of strip club events in the aforementioned “Right Round” and catchy hooks all over, as Flo Rida aims to follow up his 2008 chart topping style.

The album’s third release “Sugar” has reached No.25 on the U.S Billboard Hot 100 chart, featuring Wynter Gordan and is produced by DJ Montay, incorporating elements from Eiffel 65’s “Blue (Da Ba Dee)”, adding to the breadth of influences Flo Rida is open to take on for extra flavour.

“R.O.O.T.S” was released March 30 on iTunes (you can check it out here), and pulls together a wide-range of pop classics with exciting lyrics for a result that sticks with what made so many sales last time. With the stand out track “Right Round” backing up “Low” and more of the same with star guests as seen on “Mail On Sunday”, Flo Rida makes sure he doesn’t try to fix what isn’t broken in a time where big sales are very hard to come by.

Rating: 3/5

The single gives all four members of the group some adequate mic time and the Black Eyed Peas even make some use of the Auto-Tune technology to synthesize their vocals. The production comes from will.i.am and delivers a funky concoction of beats that combine electro and pop, constantly changing to leave no lingering melody.

Will.i.am opens with the first verse, switching the vocoding on and off to spit some catchy lines “I got the hit that beat the block, you can get that bass overload” and “That digital spit, Next level visual sh*t”.

Fergie adds the vocal glue, coming in for the chorus with punchy lyrics, best of all “I’m so 3008, you’re so 2000 and late” while resonating a lungful bridge “People in the place, if you wanna get down, put your hands in the air; will.i.am drop the beat now.

Taboo adds some rhythmical lyrics “I’m on the supersonic boom, y’all hear the space sh*t zoom” before apl.de.ap contributes an increasingly broken styled spit starting with “I’m a beast when you turn me on, into the future cyber-trone.”

The quartet exhibit great chemistry to work with a fusion of catchy beats and lyrics to lead off what might be their final album together. “Boom Boom Pow” was released on March 30 and has reached No. 7 on the U.S. Billboard Hot Rap Tracks and No. 34 on the Rhythmic Top 40 charts.

Haven’t heard the single yet? You can check it out here on iTunes.

Rating: 4/5

Kid Cudi has arrived on the hip hop scene under the wing of Kanye West and with “Day ‘n’ Nite” has opened up with a heartfelt single that is unusual for the hip hop genre. It was leaked on the Internet back in December 2007 and has had several remixes made since then, before being officially released.

Produced by Dot Da Genius, “Day ‘n’ Nite” has a somber and soft beat on which Kid Cudi suavely raps a story that takes you through the feelings of a worried man unable to sleep peacefully, describing his constant solitude, pain and yearning for a girl who once felt something for him. His only escape is to get stoned at night.

With a catchy chorus, “Day ‘n’ Nite”, is epitomized in its smooth and emotional lyrics, as Kid Cudi delivers “Cuz day and night, the lonely stoner seems to free his mind at night; he’s all alone through the day and night, the lonely loner seems to free his mind at night”, while his relief is played out in the conclusive lyrics “They fade away he slips into his white nights; he smokes a clip and then he’s on the way, to free his mind in search of, to free his mind in search of, to free his mind in search of.”

“Day ‘n’ Nite” was released March 20 on iTunes and has reached No. 15 on the U.S Billboard Rhythmic Top 40 chart, giving listeners an official taste of Kid Cudi’s debut (check it out here).

Rating: 4/5

The album features several guests including Puff Daddy, Jay-Z, Lil Kim, Bone Thugs-N-Harmony, R. Kelly, Faith Evans to name a few, while receiving production input from DJ Premier, Easy Mo Bee and RZA among others, forming an abundant assortment of 24 tracks. “Life After Death” is one of the most popular album’s of all time, having achieved Diamond status in 2000 and reaching No. 1 on the U.S. Billboard Top 200 and No.1 on the Top R&B/Hip Hop Albums charts.

Notorious B.I.G (a.k.a. Biggie Smalls) doesn’t relent in his development of gangsta rap, reinforcing themes of drugs and criminal ambitions in dramatic style throughout the album, such as in “I Love the Dough”, “Somebody’s Got To Die” and “Notorious Thugs”.

Biggie doesn’t shy away from adding some promiscuity into the mix, as he revels in verbal foreplay in “Nasty Boy” and more excessively in his head-to-head with Lil Kim in “Another”, which exhibits the album’s most prominent beat, before the more moderate “F**k You Tonight” backed by smooth vocals of R. Kelly.

Puffy Daddy’s influence plays through on some of the most popular tracks, with a pop coating to “Hypnotize”, “Mo Money Mo Problems” (both of which topped the Billboard Hot 100 charts) and “Sky’s the Limit”.

While the impact of “Ready To Die” was hard to follow, Notorious B.I.G couldn’t have made a better finale than “Life After Death”. There’s more than a little eeriness about the naming of his albums given his premature death (originally his sophomore was titled “Life After Death… ‘Till Death Do Us Part”), something that is exacerbated with his final track “You’re Nobody, Till Somebody Kills You”

“Life After Death” was released on March 25, 1997, selling 690,000 copies in its first week to mark the beginning of what would become posthumous legendary popularity for Christopher Wallace - to such an extent that the rebirth implied by the title was, in retrospect, prophetical. You can check it out here.

Rating: 5/5

The single was released originally in November 2008 on the internet, but has since been re-worked and released due to less than expected popularity on the airways. It was produced by DJ Montay, with a mellow tempoed beat and chilled out beat bumping along to great success.

“Creepin’ (Solo)” delivers a great hook on the chorus, with rhythmical lyrics from Chamillionaire describing how he has to creep around in an independent life, unable to trust anyone, exemplified with “I stay on the low-low; say they really, really fake, can’t mess wit’ you no mo’; closest people to you hate, so I be rollin’ solo”.

The H-Town rapper expands further in the first verse, telling about how since making money, he has less people he can trust and more enemies on his case. He later illustratses his elevated status in the second verse with a mention of direct access to President Barack Obama and later outlining incidents of betrayal.

Ludacris bursts in with a rapid-fire flow in a verse that would steal the show if not for the solid performance elsewhere. “The King of the South” goes on the offensive, blasting lyrics with increasing intensity about gunning his way out of trouble, rapping “Lungs full of smoke, got me slower than slow; feel like I’m trapped and there’s nowhere to go, so I, just pull out the bazooka (blah!); put a f*ckin’ hole in the flo’!”.

“Creepin’ (Solo)” was released on iTunes on March 10 and, if you like a cool beat and rhythmical lyrics, it is definitely worth a listen (you can check it out here).

Rating: 5/5

“All The Above” is a cheerful, celebratory release that sees Maino predicting a bright future with the support of T-Pain, although Maino puts in abundant verses capable of making the point alone. Produced by Just Blaze and Nard & B, it has a light beat, which periodically rises to prominence when T-Pain peaks his vocals on the chorus to sing “All the above”.

T-Pain’s auto-tune, high pitch vocals open the single with the first round of the chorus, which chirps of ambition in “Tell me what do you see, when you looking at me (woo-o-o-ah); on a mission to be, what I’m destined to be”, and determination “I done been through the pain and the sorrow, the struggle is nothing but love”.

Maino enters with a more serious tone and fiery flow to deliver a beefy verse that hails the justness in reaping rewards after a past of hardship “I done been to the bottom, I done suffered a lot, I deserve to be rich” and foretells a prosperous future “I wave ‘Hi’ to the haters, mad that I finally done made it; take a look and you can tell, that I’m destined for greatness”.

With notable stamina, an equally meaty second Maino verse serves you an imaginary path through a life of his troubles “picture you stuck in a cell, picture you wasting your life, picture you facing a charge” and rewards “I envision Obama, I envision the diamonds, I envision Ferraris”.

With a steady beat and optimistic lyrics in “All The Above”, Maino gives us a taste of a warmer side that could just make you smile. It was released February 24 on iTunes (you can check it out here).

Rating: 4/5