Music

The rapper's new album is his first collection since becoming a father with singer Beyonce. Rock critic Ken Tucker says the album is an uneven but intriguing collection of songs that tries to navigate a path between parenthood and an obsession with commercial success.

Oregon saxophonist Rich Halley takes inspiration from the Wallowa mountain range on his new album Crossing the Passes. On Boss of the Plains, Chicago-based trio Wheelhouse makes music that evokes the Great Plains and wind chimes on a porch when the weather changes.

The bulk of Friedberger's work thus far has been recorded with her brother, Matthew, under the name The Fiery Furnaces. For this new solo album, her second, she's written with a new collaborator in singer-songwriter John Wesley Harding.

Director Kenneth Branagh has given us fresh Shakespeare and witty modern comedies of manners, and some years ago he turned to opera, with an adaptation of Mozart's classic set in World War I. It's finally available in the U.S., and critic Lloyd Schwartz says the results are disappointingly mixed.

As a Japanese expatriate in Berlin, jazz pianist Aki Takase has an outsider's perspective on jazz and insder wisdom that comes from careful study. Her new album of Duke Ellington tunes reflects influences such as Thelonious Monk and Arnold Schoenberg, as well.

West has been busy in both the music and gossip worlds: He's just released a new album, titled Yeezus, and fathered a child. Rock critic Ken Tucker says West's constant blending of his public life and his music makes his new record all the more striking -- and a t times problematic.

The 23-year-old jazz phoneme's debut album showcases her take on vintage jazz and blues numbers by Bessie Smith, Fats Waller and others.

The singer-songwriter has said, as he was writing his new album Still Fighting the War, that "a theme of perseverance through hard times revealed itself." Rock critic Ken Tucker says the record is no downer and that Cleaves finds complex sentiments and wittily phrased ideas in many of his new songs.

One of America's great songwriters, Dan Penn, has written dozens of soul classics, often with keyboardist Spooner Oldham. For a while, the two were on the staff of Fame Studios in Muscle Shoals, Ala. Ace Records has just released an entire CD of Penn's demos.

Ed Ward takes a look at Philadelphia's long and complex history of black pop music. Specifically, he looks at small labels like Arctic, where several famous artists got their start -- and which has just released a set of CDs covering all 60 of its single releases.