01:00 AM EDT on Sunday, October 2, 2005

Gretchen Wilson

All Jacked Up (Epic)

Gretchen Wilson isn't just here for the party, as she proclaimed in the title track of her multiplatinum debut album. She is the party.

There hadn't been a female solo artist at the top of the country singles chart in more than two years when Wilson stormed to the top with "Redneck Woman" in 2004. She's arguably the hottest thing going in country music.

The folks in Nashville took notice of the success of her hard-drinking, bad-girl honky-tonk and yee-haw Southern rock. You can hear the aftershocks in the work of nearly every major female country artist with a new album this year. They're all letting their roots show, packing on the fiddles and pedal steels and leaving the pop to the Britneys and Mariahs.

All Jacked Up is Wilson's victory lap, and there's no doubt she's keeping it country and sticking with a winning formula. She's still knocking back a few ("All Jacked Up," "One Bud Wiser"), commiserating with the hardworking wives and mothers of the world ("Full Time Job") and, as she threatened last time around, kicking "pretty little butts" (in "California Girls," which gives Paris Hilton a resounding smack upside the head).

She does take time out for a little well-earned self-congratulations on "Not Bad for a Bartender," singing "I served cold beer, warm whiskey and rotgut wine/ Now I'm up here on the stage/ Everybody knows my name." She's no selfish diva, because the tune turns into a pep talk for all the redneck girls like her. "And if there's hope for me/ Know there's hope for you."

Wilson's not just the fist-pumping cheerleader for the average Jill, though. She's putting spirit back in country music.

-- SHANE HARRISON

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Sheryl Crow

Wildflower (A&M)

Sheryl Crow gets serious on Wildflower. She's looking inward, thinking about love, the meaning of life and the evening news.

And instead of singing folk-rock and country-rock, she's thinking about Elton John and the Beatles of Abbey Road. Along with glimmering guitars, she brings on the strings.

She risks turning doubly pompous when she combines cosmic thoughts and big baroque production. Most of the time, Crow gets away with it.

That's because of her voice, which has always had a girl-next-door quality. When the arrangements grow more expansive, Crow sings more quietly, as if she's not trying to preach but to figure things out. That's what she's doing in the pristine "Chances Are" and in "Letter to God," where she's skeptical about religion and intolerance.

The album includes poised love songs like the torchy "Perfect Lie" and the folky "Wildflower." But it's a relief when, midway through, Crow lets herself rock a little with "Lifetimes" and "Live It Up," delivering the carpe diem philosophy with stories and a beat.

Even on an album so determined to mull things over, she knows that introspection has its limits.

-- JON PARELES

The New York Times

Lil' Kim

The Naked Truth (Atlantic)

In a record that might also have been called "Going Down Swinging," the recently incarcerated rapper Lil' Kim has given her fans a feisty memento that should keep them occupied for the next 300-some days, while the Queen Bee serves her sentence for perjury and conspiracy.

The buxom rapper long ago built her reputation on sexy rhymes and outfits to match. Now, as one might imagine, she's got other subjects on her mind. And so, along with a smattering of the requisite dirty talk, we get her thoughts on fame, jealousy and the legal system.

Her musings aren't always consistent -- she blasts the media at one turn, then brags about being a fashion pinup at the next -- but her tracks are almost always interesting.

She throws in a pair of great Caribbean-inflected cuts, plus brazen gangsta chatter and a pledge to keep workin' after she gets back on the streets: "When it's my last day, then it's my last day," she says. "But until that day you can't take away/ How they scream my name/ How I pimp this game/ Critically acclaimed/ Until my last day."

-- NICK MARINO

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Neil Young

Prairie Wind (Reprise)

Full of immensely moving songs about family, love, loss and what survives the passage of time, Neil Young has delivered what surely ranks as one of his greatest albums, right up there with such masterpieces as Harvest, Tonight's the Night and Freedom.

Young was in Nashville writing and recording the country-influenced Prairie Wind earlier this year when he was diagnosed with a brain aneurysm, a serious medical condition that could have had fatal consequences. He was successfully treated, but the health scare has left its mark on nearly every song here. Young is taking stock of his life and taking time to recount what has lasting importance and meaning for him.

Rarely has an artist so honestly and intimately conveyed his biggest hopes and fears to the listener -- every emotion hits you like a breath of spring air punctuated by a lightning bolt.

Longtime friends Spooner Oldham (keyboards), Ben Keith (pedal steel guitar), Chad Cromwell (drums) and Rick Rosas (bass) form Young's core group, with special guests including Emmylou Harris, Wayne Jackson of the Memphis Horns and the Fisk University Jubilee Singers gospel choir.

With its pungent horns and harmonica, the title track is a heart-on-sleeve tribute to Neil's father, the journalist Scott Young, who suffered from dementia before his death this past June. But the most indelible moments are "Falling Off the Face of the Earth" and "It's a Dream," both achingly beautiful expressions of affection that are undercut by Young's melancholy acknowledgment that life is all too short.

-- MARTIN BANDYKE

Detroit Free Press

Toni

Libra (Blackground)

According to the cover of her fifth studio CD, it's Toni now; not Toni Braxton.

According to the sound and style of too much of this record, it's 1993, when the then-new R&B vocalist made singles with sleigh bells in them ("Please") and could be more easily excused for using silly street lingo ("Sposed to Be"). Not 2005.

And according to this reviewer, Libra is good in spots, particularly the closing ballads "I Wanna Be (Your Baby)," "Stupid," "Finally" and "Shadowless." But not as great as when the singer went by Toni Braxton and used her strong, beautiful, smoky pipes for classic songs like "Let It Flow."

-- SONIA MURRAY

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Sean Paul

The Trinity (Atlantic)

If you remember dance floor circa 2003, you remember that Sean Paul was an unshakable force, making dancehall hip-hop a necessity. Paul attached sing-jay stylee to divas in need of toasting and turned "Gimme the Light" and "Get Busy" into everywhere-anthems that made you want to slap a DJ.

It wasn't the DJ's fault. Steppers unfamiliar with reggae's stammering groove got a fever for the flava at its most infectious. And Paul's subtle mind-melding of dancehall and hip-hop empowers him.

Filled with Diwali rhythms and whistling, whining synth lines, Trinity is as contagious as past works; even more so. Whether nestled in reggae's slow saunter ("Yardie Bone") or neo-crunk noise ("Breakout"), Paul's monochromatic tone and fluid flow is a field guide to melody. He finds the hook -- under an acoustic guitar's flitter, through a siren's wail -- and yanks, lifting even a diabolical dirge ("I'll Take You There") to a sweet epiphany of song and swing.

Get ready to slap that DJ again.

-- A.D. AMOROSI

The Philadelphia Inquirer

Shaggy

Clothes Drop (Geffen/Big Yard)

When Dutty Rock, the 2002 dancehall reggae album by Sean Paul, went double platinum, Shaggy's reputation took a beating. Though Shaggy has outsold any other dancehall act, reggae fans murmured that compared with Paul's pure patois flow, Shaggy's singsong choruses and semipatois verses sounded inauthentic.

Shaggy's sixth studio album is an uneven collection, but it easily rebuts that argument, proving that as a reggae vocalist he is as bona fide as they come.

"Ready Fi Di Ride" and "Luv Me Up," produced by Jamaican hitmaker Tony Kelly, are among Shaggy's most beguiling dancehall tracks. Smoothly riding Kelly's sparkling midtempo rhythms, Shaggy serves up his trademark "mister boombastic" routine, rhyming in rapid baritone about making a woman "point her heels to the sky." And on retro-sounding tracks -- "Repent," which evokes '80s-era dancehall, and "Stand Up," which resurrects a '70s reggae rhythm -- Shaggy proves that "mister lover lover," as he's known, can also deliver sober, serious-minded sentiments.

On his own, Shaggy is a skilled reggae toaster, but half of this album finds him joined by guests -- the Pussycat Dolls, G Unit, the Black Eyed Peas -- who take Shaggy from the heights of dancehall to the tawdry depths of pop, where he sounds strained.

Shaggy is famous for taking a Jamaican American musical hybrid mainstream, but on this set, his Jamaican roots steal the show.

-- BAZ DREISINGER

Los Angeles Times

The Kennedys

Half A Million Miles (Appleseed)

Most couples celebrate their 10th anniversaries with dinner or flowers, but Maura and Pete Kennedy mark the occasion the same way they have spent the last decade: making music. The husband-and-wife team cheerfully celebrates the aggregate distance of its travels together with Half a Million Miles, which inhabits the middle ground between atypically thoughtful pop and unusually accessible folk music.

Maura's singing is a wellspring of pleasant character, injecting friendly energy into the lively mix of guitar lines in the sprightly "Midnight Ghost," and adorning "Listen" with supple texture as she stretches out across its light melodic flow. Pete adds a tight vocal harmony to the Buddy Holly-style ramble "Everything's on Fire," and the couple's vocal alloy spills sober passion atop a tangy electric guitar backdrop in a cover of Bob Dylan's "Chimes of Freedom."

The pair are not shy about the intellectualism that anchors their lyrics, whether eschewing personal touches for the robust iconography of "Nuah" or finding a hook in Hindu well-wishing on "Namaste." Their method might have limited appeal to listeners who like their lyrics simple, but their agreeably tuneful style is fun on any level.

-- THOMAS KINTNER

The Hartford Courant