Robert Christgau is the dean of American music critics.
Posted earlier this month: his latest round up of new releases, the Consumer Guide column’s annual set of hip-hop recommendations.
Covered in the column are CDs by Black Eyed Peas, Dizzee Rascal, Down in the Basement, Four Tet, and The Rapture, among other releases.
For past Consumer Guide columns, simply click on the Robert Christgau link (to your left) under Music. For more information on each of the artists covered in Christgau’s column, simply type the name of the artist / group into the All Music Guide search engine (the All Music Guide is also the first link under the Music category, also to your left).

Transcendent, spiritual, hauntingly beautiful and infused with an operatic, fugue-like melancholy, Rufus Wainright’s 2003 CD release, Want One, was (quite simply) one of the best albums released last year.
Full of rapturously romantic and lavishly sophisticated melodies, Want One expands the boundaries of pop music. In his gorgeous and deeply moving third release, while dabbling in pop, cabaret, Tin Pan Alley, the Broadway musical, and in surrendering occasionally to his folk roots, pop music’s favourite, most talented troubadour has created a pop album for the ages.

Wax Poetic: With its mix of warm, earthy vocals and chilled laid back beats, Wax Poetic’s eclectic sophomore CD, Nublu Sessions, streams reggae, jazz and trip-hop into a lustrous and intoxicating burst of colourful dance beats. The first great CD of 2004, Nublu Sessions is world music par excellence. For more insight into this New York-based trip-hop outfit, visit All Music, and type the words ‘Wax Poetic’ into the AMG search engine.