HIP-HOP
Soulja Boy, "iSouljaBoyTellem" (Interscope)
Hip-hop's leading trickster figure, Soulja Boy, 18, has spent most of the past year and a half titillating teenagers and infuriating purists with minimalist party rap and a gleeful disregard for things as they are usually done. "Crank That (Soulja Boy)," the song that launched thousands of YouTube dance videos, made him impossible to avoid. His debut album, "souljaboytellem.com," was puerile and intoxicating. This follow-up is sometimes dazzling, sometimes numbing, but fascinating. Soulja Boy's own productions, which take up half the album, are gurgling and dizzying.
He creates thickness from practically nothing -- skeletal drum patterns, undistinguished arrangements, a couple of catchy phrases looped and layered back on themselves until there's almost no room to breathe.
The album's highlight is "Hey You There," a spectacular, bizarre, vaudevillian mashup of Dr. Demento, Mele Mel and Lil Jon in which he adopts at least four voices. Compared with much hip-hop, or anything else, for that matter, it's mayhem.
Soulja Boy is still a pedestrian lyricist, but to be fair, his concepts generally require little exposition. The sinewy "Kiss Me Thru the Phone" details a particular sort of long-distance relationship (the sort that involves camera phones), and "Shoppin' Spree" rejects the very idea of recession.
In a recent 82-second YouTube video, Soulja Boy apologized to parents who think he's a poor role model and promised to clean up his act. At times the clip looks like a court-ordered public-service announcement; at other times it looks as if Soulja Boy might burst out laughing. Was he pressured? Or is he growing up? And if so, what fun is that?
JON CARAMANICA, NEW YORK TIMES
R&B
Keyshia Cole, "A Different Me" (Universal Republic)
