Billy Idol (1.5 stars)
Devil's Playground
It is a familiar pattern for a has-been rocker: a greatest-hits disc (Idol has released two since 2000), a live album (Idol's came out in 2002) and then a new studio album on the well-named label specializing in rock stars who are way past their prime: Sanctuary Records.
But Idol has not been living the Charmed Life he declared for himself. Devil's Playground is his first new disc in more than a decade (the last one being the hilariously bad Cyberpunk), and you have to be a pretty hard-core fan to think the wait was worth it.
With the rise of the White Stripes and the Strokes, Idol would have been justified going back to the rawer punk of Generation X, the group that he cut his teeth with. Idol, with the help of guitarist Steve Stevens, instead endlessly rewrites variants of the video hit "Cradle of Love," like opener "Super Overdrive" and single "Scream." Those are two of the better musical moments. "Yellin' At the Christmas Tree," for example, is bizarrely out of place on a spring release, even if it does have a line about Santa's balls jingling. Worse is a cover of "Plastic Jesus," and then there are the ballads. Being in the Devil's Playground too long has taken a toll on this rebel's yell.
The Game (3 stars)
West Coast Resurrection
Maybe the Game got it wrong. After listening to West Coast Resurrection, Jayceon Taylor's first LP—a 14-track, thugs-and-drugs album on which he sounds eerily like former Bad Boy franchise emcee Shyne—I'm convinced it should've been titled The Documentary, the name of his platinum-selling banger.
West Coast Resurrection finds Taylor in his formative stages as a rap prodigy. While charisma isn't a word normally associated with gangsta rappers, the then-nubile MC displays it in abundance, adroitly remaking NWA's famed "Straight Outta Compton" in the similarly audacious "Streets of Compton," and adeptly evoking memories of the late Tupac Shakur in the rough-and-tumble "Troublesome."
And instead of overshadowing the young rapper, all the collaborators seem to inspire Taylor to rap for the jugular, which makes for a gangsta album that sounds, well, fresh.
Track for track, West Coast Resurrection is more autobiographical than The Documentary; his 15 minutes of fame still months away, Taylor rapped like a thug possessed, like someone who had something to prove to the world.