Alastair Moock’s latest CD, “A Life I Never Had,” is the third in a lineup of impressive musical releases that have spanned a half-decade. Moock, a Boston native since 1995, is beginning to branch out of his northeast touring routine and share the wealth of his folk sensibilities with the rest of America. And the country is better for it. Expect him focusing in on covering the Midwest with upcoming performances.

“A Life I Never Had” opens with “Somewhere Elseward Bound,” a successfully bittersweet transition from the upbeat opening of “Me and My Friend” from his debut release “Walking Sounds.” The author who once penned “We just want to walk, me and my friend” now finds himself walking alone.

Nearing 30, Moock is aging in the best way possible (at least in terms of songwriting maturity), becoming an emerging solitary boy walking through the world. Becoming man, he’s the mythological Robert Johnson figure. Moock’s music has always felt old soul. Even when there are backing organ, accordion and drums, it seems that all that exists is Moock’s guitar and voice.

Inevitably life leads to loss and loss is at the heart of Moock’s writing on “A Life I Never Had.” The past sprightly Moock is now seeing Ray Charles’ visions of the bottom of a river as appealing. On the aptly titled “Bottom of a River,” we hear Moock’s blues side, a blue the color of night’s ocean. Of course, we aren’t offered the stunningly harsh realism of the aforementioned Sir Charles, but Moock does prove that for a white boy he does it all. Or has the guts to try it all.

But it’s when Moock gets out of his maudlin moods and gets into his mandolin moods that he is at his best. “My Blue Eyed Jane” comes across as effortless art, more polished than Pollock, but refreshingly light and airy, in a word (or three) — a musical gem.

“Smoke and Flowers” shows that jack-of-all-trades Moock can trade licks with anyone — blues, folk, country. But the resulting track is somewhat forgettable, like a rushed Kerouac novel, leaving us longing for his usual “Visions of Cody” – like masterpieces.

But the CD peaks and valleys like Appalachia. The following cover of Woody Guthrie’s “Pastures of Plenty” leaves the listener hoping Moock has started a tradition of Guthrie covers that will continue on until Moock stops making music, which will hopefully not be for a long, long time.

One of the best tracks on the disc is “The Best I’ll Ever Know.” If Moock isn’t influenced by Lyle Lovett, he should be. Similar pacing, humor, delivery and charismatic vocal shine make Lovett-like tracks true listener heaven — of course delivered with Moock’s gruff originality, a uniqueness still coming into perfected form. Fans of his work are sure to wait patiently for the future CD that will break him out of obscurity and into the limelight.

In a scandal that shocked Richmond lawmakers and party officials Friday, state police began a criminal investigation into whether Ed Matricardi, the Virginia Republican Party Executive Director, illegally listened in on two Democratic Party conference calls.

The investigation began after Attorney General Jerry W. Kilgore received word that Matricardi may have violated state laws by accessing the conversation. He then gave the information to police.

Matricardi announced privately that he will be leaving his post as executive director, Politics Prof. Larry J. Sabato said. However, the decision has not been publicly confirmed.

The two calls that Matricardi allegedly tapped consisted of conversations involving state legislators and top aides to Gov. Mark R. Warner, as well as Warner himself at one point. The calls were organized to discuss delicate redistricting issues raised by a Roanoke County Circuit judge’s March 11 decision that the existing district lines were unconstitutionally drawn with respect to “racial gerrymandering.”

Matricardi declined to comment on the case because it is an ongoing investigation at this time.

Steven Benjamin, Matricardi’s attorney, was optimistic about the case.

“Law enforcement officers now have all the information necessary to complete this investigation,” Benjamin said. “Ed has done nothing wrong, and we expect the authorities will soon reach the same conclusion.”

Benjamin added that, in a conference call, any party involved may consent to a third party listening to the conversation.

The allegations raise complex issues regarding the morality of Matricardi’s alleged act in addition to legal issues. If the conversation falls under the auspices of a confidential attorney-client conversation, Matricardi could potentially be disbarred for his act.

University Law Prof. George Rutherglen emphasized that the morality of the act depends on many factors.

“You have to look at the Virginia statute and what the effect of consent is,” Rutherglen said. “Even if it is a violation, it’s a further question what the appropriate punishment would be.”

Sabato was highly critical of Matricardi’s actions.

“This is unethical with a capital ‘U’,” Sabato said. “It is this sort of thing that gives politics a bad name.”

According to Sabato, phone tapping is a practice that occurs all over the country, particularly with cellular phones.

Sabato said Matricardi most likely received an access code from one of the participating members.

Virginia Democratic Party Chairman Lawrence H. Framme III said this incident raises larger questions of political ethics in Richmond.

“This is raising questions of whether this was an isolated incident,” Framme said.

Kilgore received word of the scandal through a transcript of the conversation.

“As I understand it, a copy of a transcript of one conversation was given to the attorney general,” Framme said.

Kilgore Spokesman Tim Murtaugh stressed that Kilgore had not reviewed possibly confidential information given to him, but referred the matter directly to the police.

Commonwealth Attorney David Chapman decided last week not to seek hate crime charges against a group of Charlottesville High School students accused of perpetrating a series of assaults against University students occurring between last September and this January.

The decision ends a controversy that has simmered since February over whether the alleged culprits should be brought up on hate crime charges in conjunction with other charges related to the assaults.

Hate crime laws give harsher sentences to crimes motivated by characteristics of the victim such as race. Virginia’s hate crime law can raise some misdemeanors to felonies.

Nine black males, most of whom attend Charlottesville High School, are charged in the case. The assault victims all were either white or Asian.

Gordon L. Fields, 18, the only adult charged in the assaults, already pled guilty to a misdemeanor assault and battery charge last Thursday. He was sentenced to a month in jail and 50 hours of community service.

“He wasn’t responding to anything that had anything to do with race,” Fields’ attorney J. Lloyd Snook III said.

Fields has returned to Charlottesville High School and the other suspects will remain in the Charlottesville school system unless they are convicted of felonies, Charlottesville School Board Chairman Richard Merriwether said.

The remaining defendants will be tried April 16.

The attacks were an “aberration” that has never happened before, Merriwether said.

Whether the assaults indicated race relations problems in the city or tense relations between the University and the Charlottesville community remains unclear.

Charlottesville’s racial problems are no worse than those in other parts of the country, Merriwether said.

“The students at Charlottesville High School understand that there are problems and they’re working to fix them,” he added.

Chapman was unavailable to comment on his decision yesterday, but told the Washington Post last week that there was a lack of evidence to prove the attacks were racially motivated.

The European-American Unity and Rights Organization, headed by former Ku Klux Klansman David Duke, had pushed the state to charge the alleged attackers with hate crimes.

Prosecutors often face difficulties charging assailants with hate crimes, University Law Prof. Kim Forde-Mazrui said.

If the alleged assailants had been charged with hate crimes, the prosecutors would have been required to prove beyond a reasonable doubt the attacks were racially motivated.

This could have been difficult because evidence of motivation is often scarce, Forde-Mazrui said.

In a rather conspicuous display of schizophrenia, the Albemarle County Sheriff’s Office wants to reverse its own 1997 policy requiring national background checks before issuing concealed weapons permits. The Albemarle County Board of Supervisors is likely to review the policy at the behest of the Sheriff’s Office. If the Sheriff’s Office doesn’t come to its senses, the Board, nevertheless, must not embrace the sheriff’s recommendation.

Sheriff Edgar Robb observed that removing the national background check is perfectly legal. True: It is. But that doesn’t mean it’s a wise thing to do. Sometimes just meeting the minimum standards the law requires is insufficient. When it comes to the lives of citizens, Albemarle owes its residents more than meeting the basic and incomplete guidelines the Commonwealth sets. Virginia’s minimum standards for background checking before issuing concealed weapons permits are much more lax than the national check. So, no, it wouldn’t be illegal to relax standards for obtaining a concealed weapon permit, but that doesn’t make it good policy.

The Sheriff’s Office claims that the national checks rarely reveal criminals that a standard review doesn’t. The national check, conducted by the FBI, checks for criminal history in states other than Virginia and can reveal those with false identities. Sure, this process is longer, more expensive for the permit seeker, and rarely fruitful. But nobody would look back and regret it when someone that would fall through the cracks is caught because of the stricter standards of review. Extensive review probably isn’t perfectly cost-effective. Easing up on the review process likely would cut some of the fat and save the police department money. But that hardly seems worth it when even one life that could be spared is lost because of sloppiness sanctioned by the police department. The police are in the business of protecting people and their lives. These checks are worth fighting for.

Human lives do not have price tags. Just because the process fails to catch criminals at every blink doesn’t indicate that nobody will be caught or that the benefits from catching criminals and saving lives aren’t large enough to stomach the cost.

The Sheriff’s Office misses the point when it says that there’s nearly complete overlap between what national checks catch and what the local check catches. Six weeks of waiting and the prospect of being uncovered as a criminal make it more challenging for criminals to seek concealed weapons permits. If the national check is removed, the county’s checks may turn up more misses because fewer people would be afraid to seek the concealed weapon permit, especially if they can mask their identities effectively.

The thoroughness of the national check also turns away those who would contemplate using a gun to carry out a violent act by forcing them to reconsider their intended actions for a longer period of time.
Things have fundamentally changed this past year and security matters. Saving lives ought to be the Sheriff’s Office first priority. Even if it comes at a steep cost.

Five separate legal counts have been filed against the University’s Phi Delta Alpha fraternity by Phi Delta Theta fraternity’s international headquarters.

The charges issued to the District Court for the Western District of Virginia include copyright violations, the exercise of unfair competition and the conversion of property.

The two fraternities have suffered strained relations since Phi Delta Theta recolonized at the University in fall 2001. Its charter was suspended the previous year for violating Phi Delta Theta’s national level risk-management policies.

Instead of maintaining membership in the recolonized fraternity, the old members of Phi Delta Theta formed a local fraternity, Phi Delta Alpha, that remained located at their house on 1 University Circle.

Phi Delta Theta headquarters now contends that Phi Delta Alpha has intentionally misled students, faculty and alumni by continuing to use Phi Delta Theta symbols.

“We’ve received no cooperation from Phi Delta Alpha,” said Robert A. Biggs, Phi Delta Theta International Fraternity executive vice-president.

In the official lawsuit, the plaintiff – Phi Delta Theta International Fraternity – cited use of the Greek letters with the equivalent term Phi Delta Theta, and similar variants, in advertisements, recruitment materials and the solicitation of donations as copyright infringements.

The lawsuit states that such “false and misleading designation of origin is likely to cause confusion or mistakes among rushees, alumni of Phi Delta Theta and other relevant consumers.” It also claims such actions have caused “irreparable damage to Phi Delta Theta … and have caused Phi Delta Theta to suffer monetary damages in an amount thus not determined.”

The lawsuit cites ceremonial equipment and other paraphernalia owned by Phi Delta Thelta before its suspension that remain in Phi Delta Alpha’s possession and have not been returned.

The defendant, Phi Delta Alpha, is filing a response to these charges. Phi Delta Alpha President Dan Gershwin said that, upon suspension of the house’s charter, Phi Delta Alpha re-formed as a fraternity separate from the national organization.

“Phi Delta Alpha has been fully recognized by the University by this name, and has functioned at U.Va. since this time,” Gershwin said. “It is strongly supported by the U.Va. alumni of Phi Delta Alpha and Phi Delta Theta.”

Phi Delta Theta would not comment because its official headquarters, not the University chapter, filed the lawsuit.

Both the Inter-Fraternity Council and the Office of Fraternity and Sorority Life have remained impartial in the dispute.

Aaron Laushway, assistant dean of students for fraternity and sorority life, also emphasized that the disagreement is a matter for the two fraternities involved to resolve. “For its part, the University respects the freedom of any student organization to locally associate either independently or in affiliation with a national organization,” Laushway said.

Along with the annual entourage of outrageous April Fools’ jokes, yesterday marked the beginning of Asian Pacific American Heritage Month.

APAHM is nationally celebrated during the month of May, but is celebrated in April by the University and other institutions in order to designate a full academic month to APA culture and heritage.

“I believe APAHM was created with the purpose of educating non-Asians about the contributions of Asians in America,” Asst. Dean of Students Ajay T. Nair said.

He noted that the month of May has particular significance to the APA community, because the first Japanese immigrants arrived in the United States May 7, 1843.

The theme of this year’s celebration is “Accomplishment, Pride, Action.”

“The theme concisely describes the purpose of APAHM, which is to recognize the rich and diverse contributions and accomplishments of APA’s and to encourage all people to take pride in being American, while also acknowledging that this already great country can only be improved if we aren’t passive and take action,” said Ryan McCarthy, outgoing Asian Student Union President.

For the first time, the ASU created an APAHM committee within the organization in order to include the most diverse range of individuals in planning for the celebration.

A full month of activities commenced yesterday evening with an address from Howard University Law School Prof. Frank Wu in the University bookstore. Wu described his experience teaching at a predominantly black college.

He made particular note of the fact that he is occasionally asked if his ethnicity is actually black.

“This tells us if you’re Asian-American, you’re expected to fit in,” he said. “What we don’t mention is what the standard [of fitting in] is.”

Wu described the fight for civil rights as an ongoing process in which everyone should participate.

“Diversity is like democracy,” Wu said. “It never ends.”

The APAHM committee has organized events almost every day for the month of April, spanning the many different cultural groups included under the ASU.

“Our goal was to make [the month] more diverse, not just within the Asian-American community but without,” Trinh said.

Many prospective University students dashed to their mailboxes this past weekend in hopes of finding a letter of admission from the University.

Including both early and regular decision applicants, the University offered admission to 5,228 prospective students, a number down slightly from last year in which 5,534 offers were mailed.

“Most of them wait until the end of April to decide,” Dean of Admissions John A. Blackburn said.

The University admitted a larger number of students under the early decision plan this year – 980 offers were made as opposed to 906 last year. This increase resulted in the total number of regular decision offers decreasing by about 300.

In the early decision pool, there were “considerably more applicants that were well qualified,” Blackburn said.

Admissions officials aim to admit a class comprised of about 67 percent in-state students and 33 percent out-of-state students. Although two-thirds of total applications come from out of state, in-state prospectives are more likely to accept the University’s offer than are their out-of-state equivalents.

Most in-state students come from Northern Virginia, and the majority of out-of-state students hail from large cities and the Eastern seaboard.

The University uses a gender blind admission procedure, and this year, more women than men applied. Consequently, 2,832 women were offered admission as opposed to 2,396 men.

The Office of Admissions cites the ideal class of 2006 size as 2,979 students. This breaks down into 2,335 College students, 510 Engineering students, 86 Architecture students and 48 Nursing students.

“We’ll be close to that,” Blackburn said.

Each individual school within the University requires its own specific qualifications for admission, and officials evaluate applicants based on those separate criteria.

The Engineering School expects prospective students to have a very strong background in math and science. College students are expected to excel in math and science, as well as the humanities. The University seeks creative students who can create new concepts and designs to enroll in the Architecture School.

For the Nursing School, “we want people who truly want to be nurses eventually,” Blackburn said.

The numbers for admitted minority students, such as blacks and Hispanics, remain about the same as last year. Figures are “in the range of 600 offers for African-American students,” Blackburn said.

“We may have wait list activity in May and June, so these numbers may go up slightly by the end of the summer,” he added.

Initial fears of decreased international applicants because of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks proved unfounded.

“We expect another class with a sizeable number of international students,” Blackburn said.

Last year’s class included about 5 percent international students, and this also should be the case for the class of 2006.

Officials screen applications by a two phase process. In phase one, two readers examine each application and label it as either “well qualified” or “poorly qualified.”

About half of the applications survive to phase two in which a committee, made up of two to four deans, decides to offer admission or place them on the waiting list.

After May 1, officials reevaluate applicants placed on the waiting list based upon how many students accepted offers of admission to each of the University’s schools.

This year, approximately 1,900 students were placed on the waiting list, and typically between 60 and 250 of those students eventually receive an offer of admission.

Many students now are faced with a life-changing decision.

“I looked at both U.Va. and William and Mary seriously, and I still haven’t decided between them yet,” said Ali Faruk, a senior at C.D. Hylton High School who received an offer of admission yesterday. “I guess my parents and I will be sitting down and looking at what I plan to do in the future.”

1. Now 9 / Various Artists

2. The Best of Both Worlds / R. Kelly and Jay-Z

3. O Brother, Where Art Thou / Various Artists

4. World Outside My Window / Glenn Lewis

5. Far Side of the World / Jimmy Buffett

6. Drive / Alan Jackson

7. [Hybrid Theory] / Linkin Park

8. Under Rug Swept / Alanis Morissette

9. Word of Mouf / Ludacris

10. M!zundaztood / Pink

www.billboard.com

Sleeper Album Pick

While You Weren’t Looking

Caitlin Cary

Contrary to any beliefs harbored by alt-country neophytes, Whiskeytown was not the Ryan Adams Band. He may have been the band’s brains, but Caitlin Cary was its heart, her delicate violin and charming voice keeping each track from falling into heartbreaking desperation. Her solo debut doesn’t place her amongst the genre’s sirens Neko Case and Kasey Chambers; instead it distills the refined sweetness of “Pneumonia” and emerges with a wistful folk-pop that draws upon an ability to take the best from collaborators (Jen Gunderman, formerly of the Jayhawks, and most members of Whiskeytown). Nothing shockingly deviant, but Cary never demanded the spotlight like her former bandmate.

-Phil Runco

Top Ten Classic Nickelodeon Shows

1. Salute Your Shorts

2. Clarissa Explains It All

3. Hey Dude

4. The Adventures of Pete & Pete

5. You Can’t Do That On Television

6. Sharon, Lois and Brahm

7. Doug

8. Double Dare

9. Welcome Freshmen

10. Today’s Special

-According to Brian Cook, Opinion Editor

U.Va. Spanish Theater

Retablo de la avaricia, la lujuria y la muerte

by Ramn del Valle-Incln

Apr. 4 – 6 at 8 p.m. and Apr. 7 at 5 p.m. in Helms Theater, $5

The U.Va. Spanish Theater Group, in its 22nd year, will present a play directed by Fernando Oper entitled “Retablo de la avaricia, la lujuria y la muerte” by Spanish playwright Ramn del Valle-Incln. Alongside Garca Lorca, Valle-Incln is one of the most recognized Spanish dramatists of the 20th century. He is particularly well-known for his impressionistic esperpentos which grotesquely depict the Spanish experience at the turn of the century. “Retablo de la avaricia, la lujuria y la muerte” is a three-part play which explores the themes of greed, lust and death.

The three plays are entirely in Spanish, but the program will contain detailed English synopses. Tickets can be purchased by calling the box office at (434) 924.3376. UVA students may purchase tickets using Arts Dollars.

Upon opening up the case of “Riviera,” the latest from Big Head Todd and the Monsters, I was greeted to the fan club merchandise order form that was slipped into the liner notes. That wasn’t quite what I had expected – Todd always seemed to lay fairly low on the radar of pop culture, playing off the credibility lent by the resulting “home-grown” feel. The fact the band members chose to partake in such crass commercialization of their art kind of surprised me; the rest of the album would eventually follow suit.

The Monsters usually are considered a modern rock band, both because they’re contemporary and they play rock and roll. But they’re not terribly “modern” in spirit. They tend to pay homage to the songsmiths of the 1960s and 1970s, a move that somehow gives their music a bit more substance than that of their peers, but simultaneously implies that they’re about 30 years too late. We might have revered these guys a great deal more if they’d hit the scene a few decades ago. As it is, however, they serve as a sort of reminder of rock’s golden age and as a seed of hope suggesting that perhaps all new music won’t suck.

They’re still just a seed, though. The Monsters haven’t begun covertly plotting the downfall of Britney Spears and Fred Durst, but if we give them a little time to develop themselves further and then luck out with a tragic and premature death, they could potentially give today’s music a kick in the right direction. “Riviera” fits in quite nicely with this scenario – the album seems straight out of the late 1960s but doesn’t offer false hopes of the Monsters leading any sort of classic rock revival just yet.

On the other hand, given their sound, fan base and overall vibe, we might just as easily label them a “jam band,” cross-reference them with Widespread Panic and Phish, and leave it at that. The problem with this approach: they don’t jam. Whereas Phish could spend 20 minutes on a cover of the “Oscar Meyer Weiner” song without so much as a blink, “Riviera’s” songs are all under five minutes in length and lack any noteworthy instrumental breaks. Many of them seem to lack that extra-something; the catch here is that they’re missing the mojo typically injected into a live performance. Within two or three listens, this album made me really want to see some live Monsters so I could hear the songs the way they should really be played.

As a jam-less jam band, they’re missing more than just the solos and improvisation. They also lack the pop sensibility derived from the other end of the spectrum – the kind that put Blues Traveler on the map. “Riviera” is not a hook-driven record; there are no memorable licks at all on most of the pieces, and the few that are present aren’t terribly catchy.

You can’t really sing these songs back to yourself. I want to say the lyrics are forgettable, but the truth is, they never even register in the first place. With no catchy riffs, no superb songwriting and no worthwhile instrumental noodling, then, the question becomes, “Just what does this album have to offer?”

That’s the tricky part, and it took quite a while for me to figure it out. “Riviera” is ambient music. This seems sort of counterintuitive, because the songs are four-chord rockers rather than seven minute soundscapes, but if and when this album appeals to you, it will have much to do with the mood it sets. You can’t blast “Riviera” while cruising with the windows rolled down. You can’t work out to it. You can’t dance to it. You can’t do anything to it, really – it’s just kind of “there” most of the time, keeping the background to your life a little more interesting. The band’s supposed potential notwithstanding, this is at best music to ignore and at worst music to deplore; which, is a matter of personal preference.

“Riviera” is rock music … it’s just not rocking rock music. The excitement of older hits like “Resignation Superman” and “Broken Hearted Savior” surfaces briefly on the standout track, “Hysteria,” and to a lesser extent on songs like “Julianna” and “Again and Again.”

But for the most part, this is a throwaway album that just happens to fare unusually well if you choose not to throw it away. Nevertheless, there’s enough here to please those who come to the table knowing exactly what they want, and existing Monsters fans will be back in their element starting with the very first chord. “Riviera” is not going to put the Monsters in any record books nor win them a legion of panty-launching new fans, but it will satisfy the ones that have stayed with them this far.

There is no denying the fact that R. Kelly and Jay-Z are power hitters within the respective realms of R&B and hip-hop. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that it was only a matter of time before the two came up with the great idea of combining their superstar names for an entire album – an album to supercede all others. Sadly, the highly anticipated collaboration, “The Best of Both Worlds,” hardly lives up to its self-entitlement.

The problem begins with the title. The superlative “Best” suggests the album will be set apart from all others – it takes two platinum artists and extracts the “Best” of both talents. But any discriminating consumer will not be convinced that this album is the “Best” of anything except marketing gimmickry. This rings especially true for those of us who know all about the individualistic musical talent exhibited in “Reasonable Doubt,” “In My Lifetime 1″ and “Dynasty” by Jay-Z, as well as “12 Play,” “R. Kelly” and “TP-2.com” by R. Kelly. If you know what these two artists are capable of, this album pales in comparison.

The tricky part about putting out an R&B and hip-hop combination LP is that each song needs to either have an intrinsic commercial value (catchiness) or an intrinsic artistic value (real depth). Anything in between just doesn’t come off right. On a positive note, I have to give the producers some props for recognizing the importance of finding the right combination of Jay-Z’s hard knock lyrics and R. Kelly’s traditionally inspirational vocals. I have much respect for their ability to play the delicate game of give and take.

On the other hand, there are definitely moments when the R&B stylings of R. Kelly are a little overbearing and the lyrical flow of Jay Z leaves much to be desired. The album’s production and overall quality is inconsistent, which is to be expected from lesser artists – but not from the best.

In discussing their new creation, Jay-Z and R. Kelly have emphasized their desire to tell it like it is, because they’re “from the dirt.” After all, like most other hip-hop artists, they have no other desire but “keeping it real” for their fans. At first, this statement seems off-putting because the majority of their lyrics are about their overindulgent lifestyles as international superstars. In a sense, this is keeping it real, but it’s not the kind of reality that the two imply they want to give to people. Taking this theme with a grain of salt, however, it is easy to enjoy the good beats and choruses.

There are a few tight party anthems that Jay-Z and R. Kelly put together well, although their collaborations in the genre of sexually explicit songs is disappointing. As individuals, they’ve proven their knack at bringing bedside manner to the forefront in songs like “Feeling on Your Booty” and “I Just Wanna Love You,” but something vital got lost when combining forces. Hip-hop and R&B artists ranging from Ginuwine to the 69 Boys to Luke have known for years that songs with sexual themes can only be successful if they’re catchy and innovative – in itself, the theme pushes the limits of what can be considered popular music. The majority of sexually themed tracks on the album just leave the listener counting down to the song’s end.

Admittedly, one reason I’m so critical of the album is not only because it doesn’t reach its potential, but also because of the artists’ general attitude toward their album. Jay-Z claimed at the album release party that the duo are just creative people, so what they do is create. Well, the demonstration of this creativity is extremely lacking on “The Best of Both Worlds.” While the two artists have managed to come up with some respectable songs, they haven’t rocked the boat of hip-hop. Another favorite quote is the one in which R. Kelly proclaims that their collaboration will promote more unity among black artists. This is a rather profound statement about an album so unexceptional.

Four tracks at the most will get airtime, whether it’s on the radio or in the dancehall; this includes the two tracks that have already received good consumer feedback – “The Best of Both Worlds” and “Get this Money.” My personal favorites are “Green Light,” “The Streets” and “Take You Home With Me.” In fact, most of the songs keep my head bobbin’. Like I said before, these guys are phenomenal, and everyone knows it. But they should have reached deeper to please their fans this time, and they didn’t rise to the occasion.