The Art of Music Trilogy [Music Fusion, 1999]
You thought he'd died and gone to his reward, and so did the All-Music Guide, where his timeline ends in the '80s, but his discography tells a different tale: easily the most prolific "rock" artist of the '90s, manufacturing "instrumental new world ambient music" and God knows what else at a staggering clip. Night Airs, Aspirant Sunrise, Aspirant Sunset, Black Knights in the Court of Ferdinand IV, Phantom Power, Softsword: King John and the Magna Charter [sic], A World of Wisdom, and 2000 A.D. Into the Future get us only to the end of 1991, and he's kept it up--by my count, 35 albums in the decade, including this recent set, all three discs of which I swear I listened to while awake. Brief pieces suffused with the twixt-strings-and-keyboard echoes that are the special curse of synthesizers on today's auriculum, they favor harpsichord over piano and will dabble in anything a synth can, including drums and voices. The first disc, "The Sculptor," is the most soporific, which isn't a dis--"The Writer" gave me insomnia, and not because I blamed myself. D

>>128162996
My Blue Heaven -- The Best of Fats Domino (Volume One) [EMI, 1990]
Domino was the most widely liked rock and roller of the '50s--nobody hated him, which you couldn't say of Elvis, or Pat Boone, who despite the color of his skin charted just two more top 10 records. Warm and unthreatening even by the intensely congenial standards of New Orleans, he's remembered with fond condescension as significantly less innovative than his uncommercial compatriots Professor Longhair and James Booker. But though his bouncy boogie-woogie piano and easy Creole gait were generically Ninth Ward, they defined a pop-friendly second-line beat that nobody knew was there before he and Dave Bartholomew created "The Fat Man" in 1949. In short, this shy, deferential, uncharismatic man invented New Orleans rock and roll. These 20 two-minute hits, import-only for years, are where he perfected it. I'm overjoyed that the laggards at EMI promise another nicely annotated volume "in the coming months," and will believe it when I see it. Grab this one, kids. A+

>>128112684
Atomizer [Homestead, 1986]
Though they don't want you to know it, these hateful little twerps are sensitive souls--they're moved to make this godawful racket by the godawful pain of the world, which they learn about reading everything from textbooks to bondage mags. This is the brutal guitar machine thousands of lonely adolescent cowards have heard in their heads. Its creators deserve credit for finding each other and making their obsession real. But not for anything else. B+

>>128081399
Reality Check [Atlantic, 2006]
Juvenile gives better interview than former N.O. labelmate Lil Wayne and appears to be a better guy, but he's also one more bore whose idea of entertainment is threatening to kill people. A few moments seem real enough--not just "I Know You Know," in which he reminds his wife that, actually, he doesn't fuck all those hoes he raps about, but the street-mystique primer "Way I Be Leanin'." And even there Mike Jones, Paul Wall, and Wacko provide welcome relief from the nasal, constricted, humorless flow he's gotten on. Later, Fat Joe does the same. I mean, really--Fat Joe? B-

Forever [Bad Boy, 1999]
Nobody who didn't want money from him ever said he could rap, but he did have a spirit and a community, both now gone-one because it's harder to stay human on top than to act human getting there, the other because anointing Biggie your coproducer doesn't make him any less gone. Wallowing in otiose thug fantasies and bathetic hater-hating, hiring big names who collect their checks and go, he is indeed hateful if not altogether devoid of musical ideas. And for inducing a cute-sounding little-sounding girl to pronounce the words "hit-makin', money-havin', motherfuckin' pimp" he should be taken to family court. C+