(FORTUNE Magazine) – Blackalicious Blazing Arrow MCA People who say that hip-hop is in a rut haven't listened to a lot of hip-hop lately. Case in point: Blackalicious, a California crew whose music steams over with a furiously experimental spirit. If you've ever wondered what might have happened if Albert Einstein had fronted A Tribe Called Quest, check out "Chemical Calisthenics."

Linda Thompson Fashionably Late Rounder Records Linda Thompson has the kind of voice--mournful, earthy, wise--that you'd expect to hear in a tavern back when Chaucer was cranking out The Canterbury Tales. This is her first album since 1985, and it's folk music the way it's supposed to be played: full of heartbreak, free of sanctimony. (Jewel, take note.)

My Vitriol Finelines Epic We're automatically sympathetic toward any band that takes its name from the pages of a Graham Greene novel (Brighton Rock, in this case). And when the band specializes in gleaming, pulverizing alt-rock grandeur--like the Smashing Pumpkins before they sucked--consider us hooked. If radio ignores "Always: Your Way," call your Congressman.

Simon & Garfunkel Live From New York City, 1967 Columbia/Legacy Captured in a freshly unearthed Lincoln Center concert at the crest of the troubadour boom, Simon & Garfunkel come across as polite, sensitive, and impossibly innocent guys who'd get their butts kicked in the Age of Eminem. But that's the appeal: These songs are as sweetly gulp-inducing as baby pictures.

This Is Tech-Pop: 21st Century Electro and New Wave Ministry of Sound Just in case you missed the memo, the hot new sound is something called--take your pick--"tech-pop" or "electroclash" or "synth-core." What is it? As served up here by acts like Fischerspooner and Soviet, it's fun and funny, tinny and fat: Imagine the Human League jacked up on European electronica.