In the late '80s, Kool Moe Dee's How Ya Like Me Now was the soundtrack for thirtysomething hipsters who couldn't stand the Beastie Boys and Run-DMC's teenage aggression. Hip-hop culture has changed considerably since then, but a generational divide between its young players and aging b-boys still exists. But while Kool Moe Dee embraced maturity with corny keyboard lines straight off a Steve Winwood album, Cee-Lo welcomes it with a mostly self-produced gumbo of funk rock, Southern gospel, and country blues.

Nearly every song on Cee-Lo Green and His Perfect Imperfections addresses the advancing age of this current member of Goodie Mob and onetime collaborator with Carlos Santana and Lauryn Hill, a ridiculous theme coming from a 26-year-old rap musician. However, it is Cee-Lo's relative youth that makes impending adulthood something of a relief for him, an escape from turning into just another thug "with corn rows and a bandanna." Lines like "I remember the good old days / Broads and boxes of blunts to blaze / Now I got three children to raise" from the appropriately titled "Gettin' Grown" are rhymed and sung with such conviction as to make his transformation and its accompanying neuroses vivid and palpable. What better reason is there for throwing a 70-minute-long house party?

At times, Cee-Lo Green and His Perfect Imperfections is as raucous as Outkast's Stankonia and as uninhibited as the Red Hot Chili Peppers' BloodSugarSexMagick. On one track Cee-Lo declares himself a "closet freak" 'cause "everybody that's grown got a skeleton" ("Closet Freak"). On "El Dorado Sunrise (Super Chicken)," he favorably compares himself to Jay Ward's cartoon superhero, declaring, "I want to go and kiss the sky." Cee-Lo Green and His Perfect Imperfections reminds us that hearing a young man learning how to fly is just as exciting as listening to a seasoned adult navigating the airwaves. Cee-Lo plays Wed/22, Fillmore, S.F. (415) 371-5500. (Mosi Reeves) Absu
Tara (Olympic)

Context is always important for album reviews, but with a band like Absu, where do you start? OK, they're a trio from Texas, and they've been around since the early '90s. Their lyrics are a peculiar mix of Celtic mythology and Crowley-ish occultism so complex they require a glossary (kindly included in the 40-page liner booklet) to even begin comprehending. Musically, they dish out a Slayerized hurricane of black thrash metal with giant-rat vocals and insane hyperspeed drumming. My favorite sequence on this album comes at the end, where they move from an acoustic guitar interlude ("Bron," which sounds like an outtake from Rod Stewart's Every Picture Tells a Story) to an eight-minute metal epic ("Stone of Destiny," which would never in a million years appear on a Rod Stewart album) to ... a bagpipe instrumental.

Just look at the picture of them inside the CD sleeve, striking claw-handed poses and wearing creepy eyeliner and spiked armbands. They look really weird, but man, that's part of what makes them great: they're completely committed to their art, and they face the (not inconsiderable) persecution they set themselves up for with a defiance that – provided you can see through to the metaphors at work in their exaggerated warrior-speak – is actually pretty inspiring. "Absu arrogantly executes mythological occult metal," they say in the liner notes. "[We] still carry a parlous reputation, even among our ancient, yet adamant enemies.... Here resounds another invigorating account of bizarre spells from our minds' eye. Everyone else dies!" (Will York) Various artists featuring Tony Allen
Allenko Brotherhood Ensemble (Shanachie) Antibalas
Talkatif (Afrosound/Ninjatune)

Tony Allen's drumming conveys precision, density, and motion. It not only locks, it also interlocks. It doesn't seem to need studio effects, because it's a marvel of swift, sleight-of-hand trickery all by itself – it calls, and it responds. The Afrobeat rhythms he created as the bandleader of Fela Anikulapo-Kuti's Africa 70 have served as a source of inspiration for artists as varied in style as Jamaican jazz guitarist Ernest Ranglin and broken-beat producer IG Culture. Allenko Brotherhood Ensemble explores Allen's influence by plunging 11 European remixers into his rhythmic soup. The album displays a stunning range of dance styles. Tweak's "Leroy" is traditional Afrobeat, Unsung Heroes and Ty offer Afro-Brit hip-hop, Cinematic Orchestra ply piano house. Not all are as gripping as the tracks by Son of Scientist (IG Culture, again) or Off-World Ensemble (Kirk Degiorgio), but the protean energy of these rhythms offers a strong argument for Allen's place in the pantheon of funky drummers.

Members of the Brooklyn collective Antibalas have individual interests in past and present Manhattan 45 funk, Brooklyn dub, Nuyorican boogaloo, Brazilian samba, Cuban sacred drumming, Haitian vodun, and American free jazz scenes. As Antibalas, they study Fela's repertoire rhythm for rhythm. But with Talkatif, it's clear they're now moving Afrobeat in their own direction. While Fela's songs tend toward the other side of 20 minutes, "Gabe's New Joint," "N.E.S.T.A. 75," and "World Without Fear" – like the Dap-Kings funk revival band that shares most of its members with Antibalas – are four-minute-and-under marvels of economy. "War Is a Crime" marches like a Nigerian protest, but you can hear Mingus's southern cry and Timmy Thomas's synth-moan in it. "Nyash" – an ode to booty gyration for self-preservation – feels distinctly like a Caribbean carnival. Call it Pan-Afrobeat if you like, and shake that nyash until it don't move. (Jeff Chang) Josh

Roseman
Cherry (Knitting Factory Works)

While Herbie Hancock and Cassandra Wilson have taken an often self-conscious approach to fashioning "new standards" from familiar pop tunes, such groups as the late Lester Bowie's Brass Fantasy and Steven Bernstein's Sex Mob have offered looser, less reverent models for jazz cover versions. On his debut CD as a leader, New York trombonist Josh Roseman commits himself to the latter camp. That's no shock, given his résumé, which includes tutelage under Bowie in Brass Fantasy and recording credits with Sex Mob, Don Byron, and Cibo Matto among many others. But how convincingly he counterbalances serious chops with the notion that fun in the service of musical expression is no vice may catch even the most irony-averse listeners by surprise.