Styles P

"Leave a Message," a quietly touching, eloquent shout-out to the people in his life (family, the hood, the poor), is one of the more beautiful songs in hip-hop history and a career highlight for Styles P. That's saying something for an album that also includes the powerful, complicated "I'm Black," a slew of juicy retro soul beats and (minus the homophobic crap that mars the otherwise great "G-Joint") some of the rough-and-rugged emcee's realest rhymes ever. Time took four years and a heckuva lot of time(/money) to make -- it oughtta be good.