'We're all wasting away!' barks vocalist Tom Meighan on the opening, title track to Kasabian's second album, Empire. A quick peek at the sales figures, however, proves that lean times are most certainly not on the horizon. After clocking up close to a million sales of their debut album, Leicester's post-baggy rock troupe have returned with an album that ramps up all their key hallmarks: the swagger of the Gallagher brothers, the wide-pupils euphoria of acid house/acid-rock, and the crushing, propulsive dancefloor heaviness of beered-up disco rabble-rousers Chemical Brothers and Fatboy Slim. From "Last Trip (In Flight)", a sort of gospel-enhanced remake of Hawkwind's "Silver Machine", to the driving, techno-engineered "Stuntman", it's heavy on the choruses, heavy on the fireworks, and seemingly custom-made for a festival crowd - which is, of course, no bad thing. "British Legion" is a surprising stand-out, an Lennon-esque ballad accompanied by acoustic guitar. And while the mystic-tinged "Sun/Rise/Light/Flies" suggests that shimmering Indian strings might be becoming as much of a cliché as the bolt-on orchestra was in Britpop times, you somehow doubt Kasabian are at all bothered by the prospect of being too obvious. After all, it's the job of Empire to stamp Kasabian's name onto your face with a hob-nailed boot, and it succeeds in its mission admirably. -Louis Pattison.

Black on Both Sides is a manifestation of compelling, honest hip-hop. The genre's underground torchbearer, the mighty Mos Def (half of Black Star), injects intellect, humour, and knowledge into all of his rhymes. Overall, the album has an understated quality, but pure enjoyment comes with discovering the clever lyrical gems Mos drops. The expansiveness of his mindstate is showcased best on "New World Water", in which he fully represents our uses of, needs for, and exploitation of water. On "Ms. Fat Booty", a love tale with unexpected twists is woven intricately around Aretha Franklin's wailing vocals. Whether rapping, singing, or lecturing, Mos Def is firmly rooted in African American consciousness and examines social issues with great ease. Black on Both Sides will endure for many years; it's an album worthy of numerous listens. -Celine Wong.

Daniel Bedingfield's long awaited second offering Second First Impressioncomes after a substantial period of rehabilitation, following on from a serious accident that nearly ended his career after the astounding success of debut Gotta Get Thru This. Second First Impressionimplies that it's going to clear up those fundamental questions that baffled everyone from his fans to jealous record company execs alike first time round - just who, or what is Daniel Bedingfield? "The voice of tomorrow", according to the man himself in opener "Growing Up", a start/stop stutterthon that sounds like it was recorded in his New Zealand outhouse whilst high on a vicious morphine binge. "Complicated" - only the second song in - even has a (surprising passable) muted reggae flavour. However, we're back on what you might call familiar territory with the painfully sharp lyrics and balladry of "Wrap My Words Around" and "Nothing Hurts like Love. " Never far from a costume change though-witness the astoundingly good "The Way", which siphons early U2 through Duran Duran. The only conclusion to draw is that Bedders is a complicated man and such confusion only comes from the very admirable trait of putting oneself into one's work. A treat. -Ben Johncock.

Underworld returned from the Beaucoup Fish World Tour at the end of 1999, utterly exhausted after almost two years of international touring. It was the final straw for deck-wizard Darren Emerson, who picked up his record box, jetted off to Uruguay, and claimed his mantle as a globe-trotting international DJ, turning his back on Underworld forever. Rick Smith, however, reacted to the experience of coming off tour in a very different way. Locking himself in the studio for eight months, he watched and listened to tape after tape of the Underworld live experience, examining it, dissecting it, evaluating it. The result is Everything, Everything, a 75-minute compilation of the band's greatest onstage moments, from a rampant, super-fast "Shudder/ King Of Snake" to a breathtaking closing hybrid of techno milestones on "Rez/ Cowgirl"-not forgetting, of course, a frenetic thunder through the band's ultimate crowd-pleaser, the heavenly proto-trance anthem "Born Slippy". To the Underworld disciple, Everything, Everything will surely come as manna from heaven. -Louis Pattison.

Kieran Hebden is, it has to be said, something of a genius. The groundwork for Pause was laid on Dialogue-his debut solo album under the guise of Four Tet-landed in 1999, and immediately went about redrawing the parameters of inventive dance music. A peculiar mix of live-sounding instrumental jazz and technologically super-precise laptop dance trickery, it sounded nothing like Hebden's actual group-his day job is spent toiling in occasionally inspired post-rockers Fridge-and, as it happened, very little like anything else in existence. While not as radical a statement as Dialogue seemed, Pause is a definite update-a second brave step into the great beyond; where Dialogue employed jazz sax and flute in its evocation of a 21st-century jazz meltdown, Pause goes even further, coiling whispers of harp and zither over layer-on-layers of fidgeting, rattling percussion. His inspirations? Well, like his friend and protégé, Canadian tech-wizard Manitoba (whose excellent Start Breaking My Heart is easily the equal of Pause), Hebden collects sounds and melodies from a dizzying array of places-ancient British folk music, the rattle of typewriter keys, the gurgle of running water, even a field recording of a children's playground. Genius? There really is no other word for it. -Louis Pattison.

The desire to seek culture and tradition from outside one's own backyard to influence your art and music is nothing new-from The Beatles through Marc Bolan, Paul Simon and up to Damon Albarn with his Mali Music, evidence is rife even in the mainstream. The only problem for M. I. A (aka London born Maya Arulpragasam) is that her backyard was flung far and wide in the first instance, growing up as she did in the UK, India and Sri Lanka-which may go some way to explaining the bewildering, fragrant, intoxicating mesh of sounds, rhythms and head-on sonic clashes that surge willfully throughout her second album, Kala-the result of her own personal voyage of artistic discovery. She's absorbed, in addition to her own eclectic electro beginnings, aboriginal hip-hop, Jamaican dancehall, Liberian and Trinidadian influences, also finding the time to work with Timbaland (not nearly, incidentally, the highlight of the record). On "Mango Pickle Down River" she sounds like Missy Elliot shuffling in a didgeridoo with a rapping children's choir she picked up somewhere en route, while the fittingly titled "World Town" is grime arriving on an asteroid during a tribal ceremony with sound effects ranging from a cocked gun to apparent digitized bagpipes. Considering how out-of-this-world-original M. I. A's Mercury-nominated debut Arular was it is a rare delight that she's progressed with such resolute surefootedness, losing none of her intrigue. You've got a lot of miles to cover to catch her up, let's put it that way. [+]