From the up-tempo swing (including “Jingle Bells,” “Winter Wonderland,” and “Santa Claus is Coming to Town”) to the mellow groove (such as “I’ll Be Home For Christmas,” “Christmas Time is Here,” and ” Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas”), Diana Krall did it again with Christmas Songs: skillfully reinterpreted classic tunes with her exotic vocals, exquisite scatting, and extraordinary keyboard chops. With the Clayton-Hamilton Orchestra backing her up, Krall gives the holiday season a jazzy spirit.

Love is blind. In the condition of Ho Ngoc Ha and Duc Tri, however, love is deaf. Their latest project, Muon Noi Voi Anh, demonstrates Duc Tri’s least imaginative effort behind the board and Ho Ngoc Ha’s drowsing voice in which she sounds like she’s rather be sleeping than singing. Duc Tri is a talented producer, but his creativeness has seemed to take a toll on him in Le Hieu’s De Tron Doi Thuong Nho, and continues to gravitate. Without good beats to ride through, Ho Ngoc Ha’s aspirate vocals get nowhere.

While young broads like Khanh Ngoc still puts out Chinese-contaminated records, Minh Thu goes for the Vietnamese’s authentic flavor. That’s the good part. The not-so-good part is that her voice is not strong enough to tackle traditional folks. Listening to her breathy delivery and stiffed flow on Pho Duc Phuong’s compositions, you wish that Khuc Hat Phieu Ly were cut for Thanh Lam or Ngoc Ha. Furthermore, the tedious productions do nothing but bring down her performances. Where is Quoc Trung when they need him?

Like Madonna’s Confessions on a Dance Floor, Thu Minh’s Thien Dang is geared toward the club heads. Unfortunately, Vo Thien Thanh doesn’t have enough grooves to keep your feet stomping throughout. After the second track, the beats start to get aerobic. Even as you’re getting your exercise on, you just have to stop, when Okio joins in with his wack-ass rhymes and stuttered flow on the remix of “Bong May Qua Them” and “Xich Lo,” and wonder, what the fuck is he rapping about?

Hov’s back and still arrogant as fuck: “I don’t know what life will be in H.I.P. H.O.P. without the boy H.O.V.” But don’t blame him for his cockiness; blame the game for it. Hip-hop is damn near dead that Jay-Z has to roll out of his CEO’s chair and step back into the lab to revive her. With Kingdom Come, Hov shows, once again, that he can’t leave rap alone. The game needs him, and he loves you.

Right from “The Prelude,” Jigga knows exactly what hip-hop is missing—”The game’s fucked up / Nigga’s beat is bangin’ / Nigga, ya hooks did it / Ya lyrics didn’t / Ya gangsta look did it / So I would write it if yall could get it”—and he knows damn well how to fill in the gap. Whether he’s reporting on the Katrina crisis, addressing his lost ones, expressing his trouble, or bragging to his mama that he made it, Hov’s flow gets more intricate while his delivery becomes more effortless. With precise wordplays (“Fuck that exclamation, comma, quotation, I love drama, period.”) and sharp punchlines (“Keep my enemies close / I give them enough rope / they put themselves in the air / I just kick away the chair.”), he still proves to be a skillful lyricist who gets even better with time. And the mellowness in his vocal tone shows the matured Jay-Z who makes “30 is the new 20.” Gone is the misogynist, which is good, and remain is the champion of the lyrical roulette who still digs holes to bury his opponents.

As the owner of his 40/40, Jay-Z obviously wants to hear his shits, like “Anything” (with Usher and Pharrell), “Hollywood” (with Beyonce), and “Show Me What You Got,” bumping in his joint. What could be more pleasurable than watching sexy ladies shaking their booties and bouncing their titties to your own tunes in your own club? But Hov has been walking the thin line between big pimping and street hustling all these years without suffering his credibility because he knows how to balance himself. The album-closer “Beach Chair” is where Hov’s skills sold. Over the dope, bizarre, rambunctious beat from Dr. Dre, Hov spits with calm bravado and serene spiritual: “Some said, ‘Hov how you get so fly’ / I said, ‘from not being afraid to fall out the sky.’ / My physical’s a shell so when I say farewell / My soul will find an even higher plane to dwell / So fly you shall so have no fear / Just know that life is but a beach chair.”

With his previous release, The Black Album, Hov rapped every track as if it was his last. He wanted to make sure that we would miss him when he fades to black. With Kingdom Come, he even apologizes that he’s back. Not that he wants to return as a rapper, but as a hip-hop’s savior—“Just when you thought the whole world fells apart / I take off the blazer loosen up the tie / Step inside the booth Superman is alive”—and we might owe him a favor.

Life is hard enough for an average person. Imagine what’s life would be like to walk in Cindy Thai Tai‘s high heels? Even though she has transformed back to her feminine side, the road ahead as a transsexual is still rough and lonely, and she recognizes it in her debut Noi Long… Co Don, an album filled with personal expression. From the bosa-nova “Cho Nhau Loi Nguyen Cau (Tinh Yeu Da Mat)” to the jazzy “Cho Em Ngay Gio Xanh” to the sentimental “Noi Dau Ngot Ngao” to the wistful “Uoc Gi,” Cindy’s voice—sweet, slightly smoky with a touch of Thai Thanh’s sensation—floats like a deserted songbird that went through a sea of pain to get a whole new set of feathers. So get past the queer shit, and you will feel the sorrow of a woman who trapped in a man’s body.

“Look What They’ve Done to My Song” should have been the title track for Ray Sings, Basie Swings, a retouch-up album in which Ray Charles’s vocals get supported by the Count Basie (without Basie) orchestra—courtesy of technology. Although the album is enjoyable, thanks to Ray’s colossal voice and his interpretation of standards, neither Ray’s virtuosity nor Basie’s exotic tincture on the keyboard is presence.

Who wouldn’t feel bad for the grown-ass Barbie Thanh Thao? Her personal relationship is a wreck. Her albums flop from one to the next. Her vocals don’t get any better, if not worse. No matter how hard she tries to reinvent herself, she moves nowhere beyond mediocrity. The day of “nà… nà… nà… ná… na… nà… na… na… na…” is long gone. What we have left is a lonesome star trying to glow before fading away. After patiently listening to the entire album of Ngoi Sao Co Don, the two mesmerizing tracks are the intro and outro, in which she sincerely expresses her solitude without having to sing a note.

After a year and a half of hiatus, Thuy Tien—the rock chick who inspired me to create “Ao Dai Trang A Oi” motion slideshow based on her eccentric composition—makes a quiet return as Narcissus (“a young man who pined away in love for his own image in a pool of water and was transformed into the flower that bears his name.” –American Heritage Dictionary). The concept of dark, mysterious metamorphosis, which smoked up once again by producer and songwriter Quoc Bao, is a masterful complement to Thuy Tien’s introverted personality and idiosyncratic style.

Narcissus (Thuy Tien Vol.2) sets off the night mood with a brief a-cappella intro, in which Quoc Bao distorted Thuy Tien’s vocals to make her sounds like an alien from out of space. As soon as “Ngay Binh Thuong” begins, we’re maneuvered into her stream-of-consciousness epic. Even though the tune is just about an ordinary day, Thuy Tien floats her ethereal vocals into the hypnotic rock beat like a ghost passing through flying bullets, then ends the piece with a cute little giggle. On “Mo,” she lures us into her dream as she transmutes herself into a nightingale roaming away into the darkness. As the beat gets harder, her voice gets creepier. Yet the pinnacle of her vocal and lyrical artistry comes to life in “Dong Song Mo Coi,” in which she pens about her deceased father: “Dem buon nam khoc nho cha. Loi kinh me ru, ‘au o… au o… Ngu ngoan con nhe, cha di mat roi khong ve nua dau.’” After the soft and sensual piano lays down the harmony to escort her folksy crooning, the rhythm section takes over and rocks the joint up, but it is the Jimi Hendrix’s riff from guitarist Anh Tuan that sets the tune ablaze. Unfortunately, she departs from the hardbeat rock with “Bay Gio” where her voice becomes so banal that not even the jazzy keyboard could save the dullness. “Thuy Tien,” the title track, is a complete disaster when Nam Khanh pours his opera shit into the chorus. “Quen,” however, testifies her maturity in handling slow tempo. From her breath to her emotional control, you could feel her pain when she burns the night with her eyes, yet she doesn’t need your pity.

The outro “Nocturnal” almost closes out the album. Lord knows what she sings in English, and thank God the trance-flavored “I Could Still Love,” is a bonus track. I suppose when the bass thumps like it is about to blow out your speakers, you don’t need to make out what the hell the lyric is about. Quoc Bao, once again, is showing off his writing in English, and makes the poor girl suffers. Still, he’s a damn innovator, and a cocksure one too. Mad props to him and Thuy Tien for this groundbreaking work that surpasses Ha Tran’s Communication ’06 without making too much hype out of it.

Y Lan is one of those mamas who refuse to grow up. No crime in that, although you want to smack her sometimes for acting like a girl who just received her first period when she’s in her fifties. Even she admitted herself that she was born with it, so there is no point of changing it. The lady is just young at heart, soul, and sex.

When I first experienced her newest album, Hoi Tinh, I couldn’t figure out what the hell she was doing. There are folks, jazz, ballads, and even medley all roll into one. After several spins, however, I realized that the album is a huge sexual temptation. Right off the bat, she asks you (“Hoi Tinh”), love. Can you hear that she’s still calling you (“Con Nghe Tieng Goi”)? She can’t sleep at night waiting for the sun to rise so she can see you, love. You are her everything (“Anh La Tat Ca”), and it is you who takes all her worries away. She has enough of her old man who can’t seem to satisfy her anymore, as she confesses, “Thoi thi… thoi thi… nhu the cung song / Bao nam… bao nam chan goi trong hong gi dau? / Dang cay hon tui da nhieu / Le tuon nhu do tram chieu kho dau.” She needs a younger guy, someone who has enough strength to flip her world upside down because she is as wet as “Thac Do” (a Trinh Cong Son’s ballad). She also makes sure that you could hear her moaning and groaning, instead of scatting in the swing rendition of “Ao Lua Ha Dong.” And to make things more arousing, she’s mindfucking you up with “Khoa Than Dem,” a folks tune with lust, provocative lyrics that are full of lovemaking metaphors.

Y Lan is bad, but bad in a good way. If you’re a Catholic boy, I discourage you from listening to Hoi Tinh, because she will make you wanting to commit adultery. And that’s against the Lord.