Rachid Taha

Algerian rebel Rachid Taha delivered his best album yet with 2004's Tekitoi. His cover of the Clash's "Rock The Casbah" gets novelty points but is ultimately stymied by the song's innate mediocrity -- it's not nearly as angry and dangerous as the deep knife cut of "Tekitoi" (which translates as "who the hell are you?") or the insistent "Mamachi" and "H'asbu-Hum."

Arabic "Rock the Casbah" or no Arabic "Rock the Casbah," this doesn't bite down as fast and hard as Made in Medina, and it'll take more than the crib sheet to hold Francophone and Anglophone attention when it gets all lyrical in the middle. Nevertheless, Taha transcends translation when he snarls--to quote the booklet, crude though it may be--"Bores, racists, the undecided, ignorants, know-alls, winners, show-offs." If you doubt his righteous rage, the beat and the rai subtext and the ululating hangers-on ratchet his cred. "Get rid of them! Ask them for an explanation!" Yeah! (Grade - A-)