Danger Doom

What’s missing from so many popular hip-hop albums today is the fluid poetry of their predecessors. Not so with The Mouse and the Mask, in which Danger Doom ingeniously melds edgy material from Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim with genuinely lyrical hip-hop. His rhymes go beyond the last syllable of each line; Doom’s lines seamlessly match rhythm and rhyme in their entirety. The beats aren’t suffocating, but instead work out a winning kind of symbiosis with the lyrics. With cameos from Adult Swim characters such as Master Shake and Brak, this CD is essential for anyone tired of club songs spewing yet more recycled lyrics, barely audible over beats that sound way too familiar from last month’s Top 40. Mask is No. 1 in da hood, G!