CD reviews

HIP-HOP

Lupe Fiasco, "The Cool" (Atlantic)

Somber string sections and minor keys signal the unabashed seriousness of his second album. He is concerned about everything from the state of hip-hop to an impending apocalypse in songs that envision a widening spiral of poverty, selfishness and disregard for consequences. Like "Lupe Fiasco's Food & Liquor," his first album, "The Cool" moves from the personal and the local to the all-encompassing. But this time around Lupe Fiasco and his producers -- mostly Soundtrakk -- have clarified the lyrics and brought out the hooks. The result is a three-act allegory that's also one of the year's best hip-hop albums.

First, Lupe Fiasco ponders his own developing success. "The Coolest" -- following through on "The Cool" from "Food & Liquor" -- has tolling piano chords and an elegiac choir backing him as he tries to sort through the temptations of fame and wealth. In "Go Go Gadget Flow" chugging, minor-key strings give him an undertow of misgivings even as he boasts at top speed. And "Superstar," with the vocalist Matthew Santos sounding like Bono, wonders "if you are what you say you are."

The songs only grow more urgent as Lupe Fiasco expands his sociopolitical perspective. "Intruder Alert" starts as a wary love song and broadens its topic to immigration. "Little Weapon," produced by Patrick Stump of Fall Out Boy, looks at children with guns, from child soldiers in Africa to high-school shooters. "Hello/Goodbye (Uncool)," produced by the British team Unkle, is a panorama of self-deception and self-destruction that builds to a full-scale psychedelic freakout.

Then, with all that devastation in mind, the album circles back to hip-hop. Over a ring-tone-ready synthesized track, Lupe Fiasco mockingly raps about advice he's gotten to "Dumb It Down" and write about cars, money and girls. But he looks at the game far more bleakly: "All your enemies want to shoot you down," he warns over guitar power chords in "The Die," and over the crackling, ghostly track of "Fighters" Santos croons, "No one will save you."

Lupe Fiasco could easily dumb it down. Instead he earns every bit of his self-righteousness.

JON PARELES, NEW YORK TIMES

SOUNDTRACK: POP/ROCK

John C. Reilly, "Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story" (Columbia)

The title of the upcoming Judd Apatow-Jake Kasdan musical biopic parody is an obvious tip of the hat to the Man in Black. But though Johnny Cash is Reilly's primary model, what's remarkable about this soundtrack is just how many artists Reilly can convincingly conjure (Roy Orbison, Bob Dylan, Elvis) with the help of a crack comic songwriting team that includes Marshall Crenshaw, Dan Bern and Van Dyke Parks. This stuff is too funny for an Oscar.

GLENN WHIPP, LOS ANGELES DAILY NEWS