Rating: 2.5 stars (out of 4)

Transgression is crucial to pop culture. It defines the outer edge, the forbidden zone, from Elvis Presley’s censored pelvis and Eminem’s revenge fantasies to the Rolling Stones’ black-and-blue misogyny and Marilyn Manson’s fascist send-ups. And now, in a world where “American Idol” sanitizes future chart-toppers, there is the boyish hip-hop crew Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All lying in ambush.

“They are them, we are us, kill them all,” goes one of the group’s risibly nihilistic chants. Their moment is now.

Odd Future has self-released a dozen mix tapes and albums in the last few years, developing a huge word-of-mouth following that climaxed with a series of high-profile appearances at the South by Southwest Music Conference last March in Austin, Texas. At the upscale industry event, the Los Angeles collective brought boundless energy, bleak humor, boyish petulance, scalding anger and horrific fantasies that described everything from murder to rape. It’s stomach-churning stuff, but to a generation raised on explicit video games and splatter movies, Odd Future amplifies a violent discontent that most pop music wouldn’t dare address. And, like all transgressive artists, Odd Future thrills its fans by stepping over the line, over and over again. It becomes an in joke shared by the group and its fans as they annihilate taboos like so many assailants in a “Grand Theft Auto” shootout.

3 stars (out of 4)

The Beastie Boys were once unlikely innovators, whether taking the art of sampling to previously unimagined heights with the Dust Brothers on “Paul’s Boutique” (1989) or fusing punk and funk with rap on “Check Your Head” (1992).

Now they traffic in affable, danceable, self-deprecating ‘80s nostalgia. The notoriously bratty trio has hung on long enough to embrace what once would’ve been considered a contradiction: hip-hop elder statesmen. “Hot Sauce Committee Part Two” (Capitol) is the group’s first album in seven years, delayed in part by Adam “MCA” Yauch’s battle with cancer.

The Beasties do not try to keep up with current production trends. There are no Nicki Minaj, Lil Wayne or T-Pain cameos. There is an unironic cowbell fill; dated phrases such as “be kind, rewind” abound; retro cultural references to Kenny Rogers, Bob Dylan’s “Subterranean Homesick Blues,” Ted Danson and the Lambada are everywhere. So are grimy keyboards, grimier vocals and sparse beats that sound like they belong on a demo rather than a major-label release. In contrast to the polish of much mainstream hip-hop, “Hot Sauce Committee Part Two” sounds like a crusty mix tape you might pick up from a hooded dealer on a Brooklyn street corner.

That’s not a bad thing. On the contrary, it’s a refreshingly understated return to long-ago form by one of hip-hop’s most venerated groups. Money Mark’s vintage keyboards spread grease over the hard-hitting if uncomplicated beats. The B-Boys focus on old-school hip-hop that wouldn’t have sounded out of place on a mid-‘80s single, and also touch on hard-core punk ("Lee Majors Come Again") and reggae ("Don't Play No Game That I Can't Win"). The Beasties fling boasts and nonsense with verve: MCA’s raspy brio, Mike D’s fine whine, Ad-Rock’s comical incisiveness. All heritage acts should age with this much humor.

“Oh my God, look at me/Grandpa been rappin since ’83,” Ad-Rock proclaims. Who could’ve predicted that?

greg@gregkot.com

Lupe Fiasco has been outspoken in describing the recording of his latest album, "LASERS," as a long, difficult process that drove him to despair and even had him contemplating suicide. Yet it has become the Chicago hip-hop artist's first No. 1 album, debuting Wednesday at the top of the Billboard 200 after first-week sales of 204,294.

The disc, described by Fiasco himself as a compromise between the commercial impulses of his Atlantic label and his own high-minded aspirations as a politcally outspoken activist-artist, is his third studio release, following "Lupe Fiasco's Food & Liquor" (2006) and "The Cool" (2007).

Despite his misgivings about the project, Fiasco has been active in promoting it, granting a number of in-depth interviews in which he spoke with typical transparency about how the album was created. "I hate this record, the process of making this record, and I love this record," he told the Tribune recently. "What I had to go through was not fun, the ugliness I saw in people." He had to make compromises to craft more commercially accessible tracks, citing the recent single, "The Show Goes On," with its interpolation of a Modest Mouse melody, as a particularly egregious example.

But he also said about half the record is exactly as he envisioned: "There are tracks like 'Words I Never Said' and 'All Black Everything' where they let me do what I want, they didn’t interfere. There was no pressure to create, no expectation to please someone."

greg@gregkot.com 

2.5 stars (out of 4)

Lupe Fiasco’s struggles to make his third studio album, “L.A.S.E.R.S.” (1st & 15th/Atlantic), didn’t end with its release. Instead, he has turned the album into a document about its difficult birth, and it’s not always an easy listen.

Normally such self-referential, the-record-company-done-me-wrong albums are ill-advised nonsense, a sign that the artist has completely lost touch with his audience. But Fiasco, exceptional in his ability to dissect broad social and political issues with thoughtfulness and insight, has never been one to bite his tongue or succumb compliantly to pop cliches. He turns the corporate in-fighting over radio hits into a broader exploration of how those in power manipulate those who are not. But at times, the compromises necessary to get L.A.S.E.R.S.” out of record-company limbo sap the music, with Fiasco sounding like a guest on his own album.

On “The Show Goes On,” the first single from his forthcoming album, “L.A.S.E.R.S.” (1st & 15th/Atlantic), Lupe Fiasco does some venting at the expense of his own record company before turning the song into an anthem about perseverance.

Fiasco not only paraphrases the Sex Pistols’ Johnny Rotten – “Have you ever had the feelin’ that you was bein’ had” – but calls out his employer for putting “chains on your soul.” 

It’s a bold, border-line crazy move by Fiasco, but the Chicago native, born Wasalu Muhammad Jaco in 1982, felt he had had enough. Making “L.A.S.E.R.S.,” he says, caused him to re-evaluate his career and pushed him into a depression so deep he nearly didn’t come out of it.

On his first two acclaimed albums, “Lupe Fiasco’s Food & Liquor” (2006) and “The Cool” (2007), Fiasco established himself as one of the more distinctive new voices in rap, an inventive lyricist with a knack for channeling the self-empowering uplift and incisive anger of the most politically conscious ‘60s and ‘70s soul, funk and reggae and filtering it into 21st Century hip-hop. But even after selling more than 500,000 copies of “The Cool,” Fiasco says he found himself in a struggle with his label, Atlantic Records, to make “L.A.S.E.R.S.” as he envisioned.

Remember the days when Eminem was considered an outlaw? Remember when a foul-mouthed, equal-opportunity offender sold gazillions of records while the industry that profited from his booby-trap rhymes squirmed?

The industry liked Eminem’s sales numbers, alright, but it didn’t care much for his style, and so kept him at arm’s length when passing out its biggest year-end prizes at the Grammy Awards.

Those days appear to be ending. Eminem is poised to finally win the one major award that has eluded him in a career that has produced more than 80 million album sales: The Grammy for album of the year.

The 53rd annual Grammy Awards on Feb. 13 in Los Angeles is shaping up as a coronation for one of the industry’s erstwhile bad boys (see my Grammy predictions in the major categories HERE). The onetime master of outrage finds himself with 10 nominations and is considered the front runner for the music industry’s most coveted honor. His 2010 album, “Recovery,” marked a return to commercial favor and critical relevance for an artist who had been struggling for several years with drug dependency. Now he’s back, and selling like it’s still 2001 when he was the biggest pop star on the planet and the music business was still swimming in profit.

Tom Shimura, a k a hip-hop veteran Lyrics Born, feels like a new artist everytime he releases an album. He’s got a history stretching back to the early ‘90s when he was in the Northern California-based hip-hop group Latyrx and starting the Solesides label (later Quanuum), but even then the mission was the same: Don’t stand still.

“When we started we felt like the music could be taken further,” he says. “I always looked at hip-hop as the launch pad, but we felt like there were so many more places to go that hadn’t been explored. Nobody remembers this now, because we went on to have careers and make impacting albums, but we got so much pushback when we first came out. When we did Latyrx, people heard the irregular bars, the lack of R&B choruses, and they said, ‘This isn’t hip hop! What are you doing?’

“Here we were these guys just barely out of our teens, making this left-of-center experimental music. But we could rap, and we knew the music inside and out. We knew the history, we were geeks, we were crate diggers, and still are to an extent. I never deviated from that trajectory: to try to make ground-breaking, genre-defying art. So you risk failure all the time. ‘You have the most beautiful jump shot that never went in the basket.’ Maybe I don’t always nail it. But I definitely try. Everytime I walk away from an album, I think it’s a classic. I left it all out there. I could go no further with it.”

Usher: The R&B star shifted to a more mature, ballad-oriented sound a couple years ago, but when that approach was met with indifference, he revved up the libido-charged sound of his youth and returned to the charts with his latest album, “Raymond v. Raymond,” 8 p.m. Friday with Trey Songz at Allstate Arena, 6920 N. Mannheim Rd., Rosemont, Ill., $29.50, $49.50, $65, $85, $125; ticketmaster.com.

Roots: Despite their regular gig as house band on “Late Night with Jimmy Fallon,” the Philadelphia hip-hop juggernaut has put out two studio albums this year -- a solid collection of soul covers with John Legend (“Wake Up!”) and the terrific “How I Got Over,” one of the best releases in their two-decade career, 7 p.m. Saturday at House of Blues, 329 N. Dearborn, $50, $65, $80; livenation.com.

Skatalites: A legendary force in Jamaican music and pioneers of ska – a precursor to reggae -- this ensemble still delivers a first-rate horn-fueled dance party. It should be a great way to conclude the three-day Chicago Bluegrass and Blues Festival, 6 p.m. Sunday with Daphne Willis, Go Long Mule and others at Lincoln Hall, 2424 N. Lincoln Av., $15; lincolnhallchicago.com.

greg@gregkot.com

1.5 stars (out of 4)

    No contemporary pop group understands the power of cross-promotion, branding and product placement quite like the Black Eyed Peas, so it should come as no surprise that their latest single plays like a free ad for a 23-year-old song that most everyone already knows.

       Audacity more than inventiveness drives “The Time (Dirty Bit),” the song that introduces the Peas’ sixth album, “The Beginning” (Interscope).
       
        The single lifts its chorus from “(I’ve Had) The Time of My Life,” the theme from the 1987 movie “Dirty Dancing.” It’s not the finest moment in the history of sampling. Rather, it’s reminiscent of the way MC Hammer copped Rick James’ “Super Freak” for the rapper’s 1990 hit “U Can’t Touch This” or Sean “Puff Daddy” Combs appropriated the Police’s “Every Breath You Take” for the 1997 smash “I’ll Be Missing You”: clumsy, obvious, crass. 

    About 40 years ago, hip-hop started as a penniless outcast in some of America’s poorest neighborhoods.

        "Hip-hop is innovation out of necessity, the necessity of being broke," the rapper/producer El-P once said.

        Today it is a multibillion-dollar industry that transcends cultures and generations and permeates not just the pop music charts, but television, movies, comedy, fashion and product lines ranging from toys to liquor.

    It’s a classic American story of cultural innovation intertwined with capitalist opportunity, a tale of music creating a community which in turn attracted maverick investors who then were swallowed by corporations. The transformation bred multi-media stars, moguls and celebrities such as Jay-Z and Eminem.

        Author Dan Charnas tenaciously follows the money trail in “The Big Payback: The History of the Business of Hip-hop” (New American Librarian), which celebrates hip-hop even as it details the backroom deals and marketing strategies that contributed to its explosive growth.