In 2003, whispers of a follow-up Esthero album started to spread amongst her small but dedicated fanbase. Having stayed just off stage right with backup vocal credits for a number of high-profile artists, it was hard to tell if Esthero would ever have ambitions of penning and performing her own material again. OG Bitch, an EP that also served as an advance sample of a forthcoming record, came out in 2004; it’s been almost a year since then, and the associated album, Wikked Lil’ Grrrls, is only now breaking cover.

Since her 1998 album, Esthero’s picked up quite a few connections in the industry, meaning her new album is backed by a more formidable army of producers and collaborators this time around; I dare say it’s filled with as many “featuring” credits as any other hip hop or R&B album these days. Other things have changed too: she’s on Warner Brothers now, a nice promotion after her previous label, Work (a part of Sony), went under, and she’s got a cute little Parental Advisory icon on the front of the album. Oh, and the music.

I guess no one would mistake anything on Wikked Lil’ Grrrls for a 1998 retread; that much is evident. Considering the many twists and turns in her career, it would’ve been foolish to expect otherwise. But there are warning signs all over the place, from the many B-list contributors to the first track, “We R In Need Of A Musical ReVoLuTion.” Aside from the creative spelling and capitalization (apparently indicating a target audience of 14-year-old IM users), the song also features a rebellious Esthero railing against the likes of Ashanti and R. Kelly for not pushing the boundaries (or, in the case of R. Kelly, pushing the wrong ones). Which is great, but one wonders whether she’s framed the debate improperly; instead of thinking of “the shit on the radio” as something to be fought, how about treating it as something to ignore? “ReVoLuTion” seems strictly sixth-grade in more ways than one.

And yet there are still nagging little things that make it harder to write her off. Get past the subject matter and the title, and “Revolution” turns into a decent album opener. Other songs are similarly qualified successes; for example, there’s “Fastlane,” featuring honest-to-goodness Canadian talent like Jelleestone. And then there’s Esthero’s staunch claim that she still calls Queen Street home—possibly a plea for street cred. But there’s also the matter of the show she played last month with—wait for it—Ron Sexsmith, the Oscar Peterson Quartet and the Toronto Symphony Orchestra. A quirky bill for a woman we hope still has some quirks left in her.

The danger with covering topics of current interest in your art is that you flirt with irrelevance more overtly than, say, someone who writes nothing but songs of love, lust and loss. That’s why people remember there’s a movie series called Scary Movie but not all the late-90s movies it lampoons; that’s why it’s never the first single off any given Eminem album that people remember, the one with all the name-dropping and the pop culture references. More generally, some artists are very much a product of a particular time and place—so much so that outside of that context, the music becomes an embarassment.

Paul Barman isn’t exactly there yet, but that may just be because his take on things is a bit odd. Depending on who you are, Barman is a) the latest (as of 2002, anyway) in a long line of politically-minded rappers who never takes himself too seriously, or b) someone who spent way too much time in frathouses convincing himself he was clever. “N.O.W.” is a good case in point for both sides; it neatly skewers the liberal protest culture (which, as it turns out, is largely a college phenomenon—hmm…) by exposing the alterior motives of some of its participants. Or, if you want to be uncharitable, Barman rambles on a bunch about hot protester chicks and “a lot of cum.” Oh, and then there’s the woman in the middle of the song creaming, “STICK IT IN! STICK IT IN!”

I think it’s hilarious—not the least of which because how the hell can you possibly take any of it seriously? Come on, “whichever men has the balls to come to the pro-choice protest is gonna get some sex”?—but it also sounds oddly like a relic from another age, one completely foreign to us now. When Paullelujah came out, American politics weren’t quite as polarized as they are now, and so you could still poke fun at the whole process in exactly the sort of way Barman does. With a bitter election and the Iraq incursion behind us, and the threat of a nuclear North Korea and an increasingly powerful China ahead, things have taken a far more serious and dour turn. It’s definitely a sophomoric slant to things (Maxim gave him a glowing review), but the glee with which Barman recites sexual positions and globalization symbols in “N.O.W.” is worth something, even if only as a trip down nostalgia lane, when everything seemed so innocent and pure.

Finding information on obscure-but-rising Japanese artists is easy if you understand Japanese. For the rest of us, we’ll just have to pick out whatever morsels we can. Aside from your standard press release info, there’s not much on DJ Mitsu The Beats in English. The hip-hop DJ has already played sets around North America, including a gig at the opening of Supermarket in Toronto, so he’s got presence here. He’s got a profile in Japan as well, what with his work with the hip-hop group Gagle and his presence at the top of some reader’s choice polls.

New Awakenings dropped in 2003, and has since spawned a number of remix albums. His reputation in North America appears to be based solely on this solo work, which he also produced himself. “Dokkou Jazz Dou” features Hunger, Gagle’s MC, and it’s pretty awesome stuff.

Because Paul Barman is probably the only thing right now that’ll actually make American politics seem less bleak. Fuck you, America.