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Big K.R.I.T. Return of 4Eva // Big KRIT is the talented progeny of Southern hip hop godfathers like Bun B and Big Boi.  The man is hungry as a starving dog, respectful as a good Christian boy, and knowledgeable as a hip hop archeologist.  Basically, KRIT is everything you want in an up and coming star.  The man can do car culture (“Rotation”) and stereo systems (“My Sub”) as well as he can do mama tributes (“Free My Soul”) and soul searching (“Another Naive Individual . . .”).  At 21 full tracks, Return of 4Eva is perhaps too long in the tooth, but there’s just so much to like on this album that it’s pointless to focus on what doesn’t work.  ”R4 Theme Song” repurposes the stuttering “forever-eva-eva” from Outkast’s “Ms. Jackson” into an anthemic chorus that guides KRIT throughout the record; it’s essentially a portrait of modest success that comes through hard work, a trope that gets repeated often over the course of the album (“Dreamin’,” “American Rapstar,” “Free My Soul”).  Elsewhere, the effortlessly charming “Rotation” and “My Sub” are harmless backyard party fodder with solid beats and tight rhymes.  Lyrically, KRIT isn’t the most versatile rapper: you get the sense that he’s perhaps too literal of a thinker to be able to construct complex extended metaphors.  This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it does mean that his virtuosity comes entirely from his flow and not his verbal dexterity.  Who knows if KRIT will put out an official album in the next couple of years, but it would be a shame if KRIT was stuck toiling away in the mixtape trade without a real shot at a wider audience.  Rating: 7.5 / 10

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Fabolous The Soul Tape // A couple of years ago, a group of friends (and friends of friends) tried to form a mixtape exchange.  Each week someone would be in charge of curating a mixtape for the group.  My first entry was a tape that collected hip hop songs that used soul samples.  I am still immensely proud of that tape because it boldly paired everyone from UGK to J-Live to Lil Wayne.  So, when I heard that Fabolous had released a mixtape of his own raps over other tracks that sampled soul song, I snatched it up immediately.  I haven’t followed Fabolous’ career close enough to rank this among other albums or mixtapes, but I know enough to say Fab’s liquidy flow sounds great over soulful tracks from everyone from Nas to Tupac to Kanye.  On the established tracks, especially “Mo Brooklyn, Mo Harlem, Mo Southside” and “Wolves in Sheep’s Clothing,” Fabolous appropriates a singularly memorable beat and twists the original meaning of the song into something personal and original.  For example, Fabolous turns Kanye’s ultra-smooth fame-lament “Devil in a New Dress” into his own struggle with the trials of celebrity (such as it is for him).  But it’s the tracks that feature original production that really steal the show.  Sonaro’s beat on “Leaving You” is exquisite: a tight trap guides a beat that crashes with a sparkling broken glass sample and what sounds a lot like a plucked string section.  And the strings and death knells of “Y’all Don’t Know Me Tho” give Fab enough momentum to deliver his most impassioned raps.  In the end, The Soul Tape isn’t a comeback big and it isn’t a placeholder until the next album.  No, The Soul Tape exists simply for its own conceit: a collection of witty raps witty raps over soulfully smooth beats.  If I had this in my possession years ago, I would have felt comfortable forwarding the entire record to my mixtape crew.  Rating: 7 / 10

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Pusha T Fear of God // As one half of nihilistic thrillers Clipse, Pusha T has mastered the art of slinging rhymes with all the bravado of a coke don.  His rhymes are always fiercely tight and his flow is pure vocal liquefaction.  But without Malice and without The Neptunes’ sleek minimalistic production, Pusha sometimes gets overwhelmed by his surroundings.  As a general rule, the most more gaudily baroque beats nearly envelope Pusha’s surprisingly delicate lyricism.  For example, his freestyle over Lil Wayne’s “Money on My Mind” or “Feeling Myself” are simply too much for Pusha’s languid flow.  But that only means that the tracks with the sparest tracks are the most successful.  ”Cook It Down” relies on a crisp snare and a mournful organ and Pusha soars: he makes his competitors “walk like their 30 years is right around the corner.”  And just as solid is his freestyle over Jay-Z’s jazzy classic “Can I Live.”  He tosses away brilliant metaphors and turns of phrase that otherwise get lost in the fuller numbers:  ”They say I talk coke for 9 years long/That means my rap sheet is more than 9 years strong/You niggas would have thought that I was 9 years gone/But I am still in the mix like 9 ounces and a straw.”  Pusha T’s lyricism has always been his strongest suite, and it’s definitely on display on Fear of God; you just have to know where to look.  Rating: 6.5 / 10