Blues Suffuse the St. Louis Spirit of Nelly’s Rap

***

NELLY

“Nellyville”

Universal

Here’s another rap album (due in stores Tuesday) that mines the familiar theme of surviving celebrity. But the follow-up to Nelly’s debut, “Country Grammar,” which has sold more than 7 million, proves that the urban class-leap story line doesn’t have to be hackneyed.

Channeling the R&B; spirit of his hometown, the St. Louis rapper presents himself as “the Bill Clinton of tha Lou.” Nelly sings more than he did on “Country Grammar,” and he uses blues to illuminate boasts about his tightknit crew, malleable women and, of course, jealous competitors. It could easily become tedious, but the beats always love the rapper’s trickling flow, and they are the album’s dominant force--the Shaq of team Nelly.

That means his Kobe is the St. Lunatics, his MC compadres, each of whom is a conventionally “better” rapper than the album’s wispy-voiced centerpiece. Their work allows Nelly to shift from Ja Rule-like singing-rapping to Nate Doggy country-ness.

Southern-inflected and bubbling fresh, the songs generate enough goodwill that even Nelly’s collaboration with ‘N Sync’s Justin Timberlake works, even if it sounds calibrated in a boardroom rather than conceived in the studio. “Hot in Here” and “Pimp Juice” ride Nelly’s Show-Me State humor to erase the line between risque and hard-core.

Donnell Alexander

*** 1/2

SONIC YOUTH

“Murray Street”

Geffen

The members of Sonic Youth have always worked like poets, senses flared to the emotional current of their New York City, and faith in this process has now led them to one of their most human albums and possibly their best. “Murray Street,” their 16th full-length album in 21 years, is a mature statement that satisfies as completely as their last three messy experiments--”Washing Machine,” “Experimental Jet Set” and “NYC Ghosts and Flowers”-- did not.

Singer and guitarist Thurston Moore opens the lead track, “The Empty Page,” with startling confidence: Here is a myth-making combination of signature sound and accessible melodies brought into fine focus. Evoking the Byrds, the Velvets, even Quicksilver Messenger Service, the still-experimental but unforced songs contain not a wasted note, even when, as on “Rain on Tin,” or “Karen Revisited,” songs slide into trademark shards of guitar decay and shriek-back.

Given that Murray Street, the location of Sonic Youth’s recording studio, is only two blocks from ground zero, and that the Sept. 11 attacks came in the middle of writing the album, it’s easy to attribute the emotional focus to disaster. But it probably has more to do with the stabilizing kinetics of avant-rock guitarist and post-classical composer Jim O’Rourke, who now joins Moore, guitarist Lee Ranaldo, bassist Kim Gordon and drummer Steve Shelley as the band’s fifth member.

Where the old Sonic Youth shows through in pure noise lust, as on “Sympathy for the Strawberry,” there is a new heartbeat holding it all together, a sort of Eno touch, a grounding promise of resolution. It’s a return to the form that made “Daydream Nation” a landmark of the post-punk era, but with a new respect for the fragility of not only a music scene that has fallen into confusion, but, of New York itself.

As Moore sings on “Radical Adults Lick Godhead Style”:

I’m dead by the beauty of strangers

and how my head transforms them into

smiling beatific roommates

from dust to dust, they create rock ‘n’ roll.

Dean Kuipers

*** 1/2

RALPH STANLEY

“Ralph Stanley”

DMZ/Columbia

You think Eminem is scary? Check out “Little Mathie Grove” on the new album by mountain music pioneer Ralph Stanley. This traditional folk tune about infidelity and revenge is as grisly as anything for which the Detroit rapper has taken it on the chin from his critics.

Coming from the 75-year-old patriarch of Appalachian folk music, it won’t get one one-hundredth the attention Eminem generates, but on an emotional level it resonates even more powerfully because there’s no whiff of imaginative artistic invention behind it. Backed by a Burnett-led string band, Stanley sings it in a voice as old as dirt and every bit as primal, piercing straight to the darkest recesses of the human soul.

This collaboration between Stanley and T Bone Burnett, a producer-arranger with an abiding respect for the eternal power of that music, yields musical empathy and expression of the first order. There are no fillers, no novelty numbers, nothing but music born of the most fundamental human experiences: love, loss and heartache. Fleeting moments of joy stem from the belief that happiness comes only with spiritual salvation. Stanley will be on the Down from the Mountain Tour at the Greek Theatre on Aug. 1.

Randy Lewis

** 1/2

PAPA ROACH

“Lovehatetragedy”

DreamWorks

It remains to be seen whether rap-rock will lose its luster, like disco in the ‘70s and new wave in the ‘80s, but now that bands who hit it big melding fierce word flows and noisy riffs are starting to abandon the heavy hybrid, things don’t look too promising.

Papa Roach burst onto rock radio in 2000 with the groove-filled “Last Resort,” a near-perfect amalgam of aggressive textures and punchy vocal bites made even stronger by a soaring, catchy chorus and themes of frustration and misery. The second single, “Broken Home,” was more of the same.

On the Northern California band’s second album, the singer has changed not only his name--from Coby Dick back to his given Jacoby Shaddix--but also his propensity for hip-hop. From the very beginning of “Lovehatetragedy,” it’s evident that P-Roach, as fans call the band, is more concerned with being punky than funky. The album opener, “M-80,” is an all-out thrasher that sets up what follows: grinding guitars, blistering beats and sorrowful singing.

In general, it’s a more melodic record. Cuts including “Time and Time Again” and “She Loves Me Not” are as sinuous as they are emotional. The problem is that there really aren’t any “Last Resort”-level standouts here. With or without rap breaks, these new tunes, however heartfelt, lack the contagious energy and undeniable hooks of Roach’s earlier material.

Still, the sheer power and passion might appeal to a pop-punk contingent. Although the band has played on both tours, “Lovehatetragedy” puts the band more in Warped territory than Ozzfest land. Lina Lecaro

In Brief

** 1/2 Avril Lavigne, “Let Go,” Arista. Girl-rock meets boy-rock in this polished debut from a 17-year-old Canadian waif with attitude. Call her Alanis: the Next Generation. Lavigne and various producers blend sensitive folk-pop, melodic punk-metal and aggressive rap-rock to fuel glossy-gritty personal vignettes, which can be appealing but are at times repetitive and bland. Still, her declarations of individuality, tales of doomed romance and agony over being ignored ring true, and will doubtless strike a chord with her peers--and perhaps others. “I’d rather be anything but ordinary, please,” she avows. Oh, honey, wouldn’t we all?

Natalie Nichols

** New Found Glory, “Sticks and Stones,” MCA. How many hopped-up pop-punk records can the market bear? This quintet of Gen-Y brats trudges through crunchy power chords as if they actually meant something, and sing in high, perky harmonies that bring to mind, well, any number of like-minded popcore bands. This is the musical equivalent of kids’ breakfast cereal--too much sugar and not enough nutrition.

Marc Weingarten

Albums are rated on a scale of one star (poor), two stars (fair), three stars (good) and four stars (excellent). The albums are already released unless otherwise noted.