Consumer Guide: December, 2023

Dolly ranges from good fun to genius, Buck 65 ranges through the alphabet, the Feelies range through the Velvet Underground, and the Human Hearts range through simple yet well‑honed melodies.

Barbie the Album (Atlantic) Put your money on the movie before the too many Kens here give you the wrong idea (Lizzo, “Pink”; Nicki Minaj, Ice Spice, Aqua, “Barbie World”; Fifty Fifty, “Barbie Dreams [feat. Kaliii]”) **

Buck 65: Super Dope (self‑released) With 2022’s King of Drums, CBC radio personality Richard Terfry returned to hip‑hop after a seven‑year layoff that cut his two decades as rapper Buck 65 off too short, and fans like me were glad to have him back. So of course we’re even gladder he was just getting restarted—of course we can’t get enough of rhymes like “Sissy Spacek/shitty paycheck/shifty tape deck/gritty latex,” “M.C. Escher/empty nester,” “love boat/dovecote” or the crowning “I’m not an alpha male/More like an alfalfa male” (a fib—Buck’s as alpha as the alphabet he knows so well). But while no way did the beats of the percussion‑savvy tracks of King of Drums stop with what the title made the most of, the musicality on this de facto follow‑up, in particular the freewheeling exploitation of squelchy low‑register synths that go so far as to suggest bassoons, makes it even more playable. Can it be true that he'll wind up “not a Hall of Famer but an interesting career,” kinda like Kenny Lofton? Nah—he’s got more range than Kenny Lofton, who in case you didn’t know was no slowpoke. A