Rockin' Bones: 1950s Punk & Rockabilly: Various Artists

The hip-hop landscape is littered with compilations of wildly varying quality, so it's often helpful to stick with solid brand names like Fat Beats and Stones Throw. The first release from Fat Beats, a New York record store that caters to discriminating crate-diggers, last year's Fat Beats Compilation: Volume One provided a vivid snapshot of where underground hip-hop was headed. The second volume builds on that album's success, offering listeners a Whitman's Sampler of challenging hip-hop from across North America. Saukrates, the first signee to Redman's vanity label and an even bet to become Canadian hip-hop's breakout star, holds it down for Canucks alongside Chicago's Common with "Play Dis," which owes more to vintage Main Source than Redman. From slightly south of the Canadian border comes Minnesota's Atmosphere, whose "My Songs" embodies the group's sometimes frustrating tendency to produce compilation tracks that are as good as any on its own albums. The rest of the disc largely alternates between the East and West Coast, with DJ Premier doubling up on favors to washed-up old-schoolers with Just-Ice and Big Daddy Kane's "Just Rhymin With Kane" and Madlib contributing the Wildchild solo track "Make Them Clap" and Quasimoto's "Come On Feet." Dilated Peoples, one of the few acts to enjoy both underground respect and a major-label budget, is represented both individually and together, but the disc also finds space for cult favorites like J-Zone and Arsonists. Consistent and eclectic, Volume Two should be required listening for anyone who thinks underground hip-hop begins and ends with Mos Def, The Roots, and the Soundbombing series. Stones Throw's Peanut Butter Wolf's Jukebox 45s boasts an irresistible hook designed to appeal to its core audience of vinyl fetishists—almost all of its tracks originated as part of the label's series of limited-edition 45s—but it doesn't really need one. A vinyl-lover's paradise, Stones Throw is the sort of label where the past and present can hang out, share a blunt, and listen to old Stevie Wonder records together. Stellar releases like Lootpack's Soundpieces: Da Antidote, Quasimoto's The Unseen, and last year's The Funky 16 Corners have helped create fevered anticipation around everything it puts out, and Jukebox 45s doesn't disappoint. Essential to the label's success is super-producer and sonic mad scientist Madlib, who shares Dan The Automator's twisted sense of humor, crate-digging prowess, and Kool Keith-like knack for side projects, pseudonyms, and artistic curveballs. Madlib makes the snap, crackle, and pop of vintage vinyl an essential part of his aesthetic, and filters the soul, funk, and jazz of past decades through his own subtly psychedelic true-school sensibility. Under the aliases of turntable instrumentalist Beat Conductor, faux-retro jazz band Yesterday's New Quintet, helium-voiced Quasimoto, and part of Lootpack, Madlib ties Jukebox 45s together, although Lootpack associate Declaime nearly steals the album as woozy, blunted retro crooner Dudley Perkins on "Flowers." Captain Funkaho's "My 2600," meanwhile, offers a loopy spin on the label's new-old aesthetic with a hilarious bit of wah-wah funk paying homage to the wonders of Frogger, Centipede, Dig Dug, and Pitfall. An album that slides into a deep, subterranean groove and sustains it, Peanut Butter Wolf's Jukebox 45s confirms Stones Throw's status as the label The Beastie Boys' now-defunct Grand Royal should have been but never was.