On the plus side, Atlanta rapper Young Dro has refrained from loading his CD with the irritating skits and interludes that pad out far too many hip-hop albums. His record has 15 tracks, straight up. Also, Dro has an appealingly odd way with words – in one lyric, he says danger, anger? I was selling dope before Jesus was in a manger. But his superficial lyrics eventually become tiresome. He drops brand names like he's reading the mall directory at Lenox Square. He is way too impressed with automobiles. He doesn't say anything that another Atlanta rapper hasn't already said better.

– Nick Marino

POP: Jessica Simpson, “A Public Affair” (Epic) ½

The single life suits Simpson. Her first album since divorcing Nick Lachey is lighthearted, though not without referencing the past. Come to find Simpson cried on sister Ashlee's shoulder last Christmas listening to Patty Griffin's “Let Him Fly,” warbled here at album's end. As she puts it in the liner notes, Simpson's “beginning the next lifetime” with a shout-out to her peers on the roller-disco tune “A Public Affair.” And though her voice lacks punch on Dead or Alive's hip-swiveling Flashback Lunch anthem “You Spin Me Round (Like a Record),” Simpson makes good on “B.O.Y.,” which posits the bland blonde fronting the Cars (a sample from the Ric Ocasek-penned “Just What I Needed” completes the airbrushing).

– Sandra Barrera

AMERICANA: Old Crow Medicine Show, “Big Iron World” (Nettwerk) ½

On its sophomore release, methamphetamized old-timey string band OCMS comes off like Bob Dylan at a barn dance. Infused with a deep knowledge of America's folk idioms, the quintet applies sweet, starchy harmonies and furious guitar, fiddle and harmonica attacks to two salacious reveries, a balancing pair of bad-woman blues, dual tales of working-class heroism (Woody Guthrie's “Union Maid” gets all hopped up just in time for Labor Day) and some sharing of sublimely silly wisdom. Then there's “I Hear Them All,” so far the most inspiring protest song of this sorry century.

– Bob Strauss