Snoop Dogg
“EGO TRIPPIN’ “
RATING: 2 1/2 EXCLAMATION POINTS
The title of Snoop Dogg’s ninth proper album could sum up this sleek but noticeably insecure record, which finds Snoop Dogg obsessed with defining just who, or what, he is. Throughout “Ego Trippin’ ” Snoop tries to burnish his credentials as a party-ready high roller, a street-toughened gangster, an insatiable lady’s man and a nurturing husband and father. But naughtiness is still more his style, even if the album’s explicit version of “Sensual Seduction” — his current Top 10 single, a robotic synth-pop track — is so clumsily suggestive that it verges on comedy. [NATE CHINEN, NEW YORK TIMES NEWS SERVICE]
Kaki King
“DREAMING OF REVENGE”
RATING: 2 EXCLAMATION POINTS
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Kaki King is an acoustic guitarist of demonstrable skill — and her technical displays are still there on “Dreaming of Revenge,” which is more than half an instrumental record, and they can be jarring and disjunctive. King could have ended up in jazz, New Age or metal. But she ended up in indie rock, and her eager, fizzy playing feels at odds there; it’s so unlike the studied slouchiness that typifies the musicianship in that world. But when she sings a good, selfish pop song, she’s on to something else entirely. [BEN RATLIFF, NEW YORK TIMES NEWS SERVICE]
Nine Inch Nails
“GHOSTS I-IV”
RATING: 3 EXCLAMATION POINTS
“Ghosts I-IV” is 36 instrumental tracks (or near-instrumental, since human voices are among the sounds). Even without verbal cues — the track titles are numbers — much of the music is still unmistakably Nine Inch Nails: overloaded electronic dance beats (3, 7, 16, 19, 24, 29), isolated piano notes and elegies (1, 9, 12, 36), pounding rock (4, 26, 27, 31, 35) or all of them together (10), usually in minor keys in the bleak, open soundscapes that Trent Reznor has perfected. [JON PARELES, NEW YORK TIMES NEWS SERVICE]
CD RACK
ALSO IN STORES TUESDAY
* Randy Jackson, “Randy Jackson’s Music Club, Volume 1”
* Mike Patton, “A Perfect Place”
* Shawn Mullins, “Honeydew”
* Presidents of the United States of America, “These Are the Good Times People”
* Rick Ross, “Trilla”