CD reviews: Waka Flocka Flame; Fistful of Mercy

Waka Flocka Flame, "Flockaveli" (Asylum/Warner Bros.)

"Flockaveli" is an album about pain, the physical kind. It's a brutalist concoction, one of the more bracing and unforgiving hip-hop releases in recent memory. Almost single-handedly, and without context, it rediscovers hip-hop's pugnacity in an era of extreme melodic sophistication, an idiosyncratic anomaly.

Waka Flocka Flame, a protégé of the wordplay specialist Gucci Mane, is a stilted, awkward and possibly awful rapper. In interviews, he speaks openly of his disdain for high-end lyricism. His rhymes barely merit quoting. But he's thrilling nonetheless, a dynamo of emphasis and innate charm.

In the young producer Lex Luger, who produced 11 of the 17 songs here, he's found a worthy compatriot. Luger's beats are casual and enormous, and he serves as a reminder that naive ideas about scope can still succeed. The producer and rapper are a dream pair. Often it sounds as if they're engaged in a cage match, or a street brawl. The tracks from other producers here largely feel like affronts, or maybe intermissions.

Feelings are buried deep on this album, barely given room to breathe. On "Hard in da Paint," Waka Flocka Flame raps about dropping out of school after the death of his younger brother.

While Waka Flocka Flame isn't much for innovation, he's not dense. He is at peace with his limitations, though over the course of "Flockaveli," something intriguing happens. The less attention he appears to pay to his words, the smoother they end up coming out. Try though he may to avoid it, his anti-style is slowly becoming a style.

JON CARAMANICA, NEW YORK TIMES

For a certain kind of guy who always seems to be swinging in a hammock somewhere, one bellbottomed leg kicked over the side, the harmonies of Crosby, Stills and Nash are sacrosanct, sometimes to the point of creative claustrophobia.

On Fistful of Mercy's debut, that isn't the case. Singer/songwriters Dhani Harrison, Ben Harper and Joseph Arthur are all confident enough to add their own wintry and sometimes endearingly gawky take on the Laurel Canyon formula.

Most of the tracks here seem made for dewy, slow-to-rise mornings, with lines of slide guitar and the kind of slightly cockeyed melodies that keep the listener poised for surprise. Sometimes a rambunctious mood sets in, as on country-blues stomper "Father's Son." At other times, the threesome tucks in for meditation: "30 Bones," the only instrumental track, is a gorgeous, feathery construction.

MARGARET WAPPLER, LOS ANGELES TIMES