Reviews: Gwen Stefani, Jay-Z

Reviews: Gwen Stefani, Jay-Z

Gwen Stefani 'The Sweet Escape': Aidin Vaziri | Forget about the Middle East. If you really want to see a war, pull two strangers off the street and ask them how they feel about Gwen Stefani (left). Chances are, they'll be rolling around on the sidewalk, exchanging blows before the conversation even reaches No Doubt's back catalog. To her fans, she's an originator and icon, a perfectly pitched blond bombshell that can do no wrong, even when yodeling her way over a chunky sample from "The Sound of Music's" "The Lonely Goatherd" on her latest single, "Wind It Up." To Stefani's detractors, her voice is even more teeth-gnashingly horrendous than her material, and she is largely responsible for Fergie's solo success. We're not about to take sides (although we're definitely swayed by the fact that she's about a thousand times more fun than Beyoncé), but we will say this much: "The Sweet Escape" doesn't feel so much like a step forward for the new mom as an exercise in cleaning out the closet. Most of the tracks on her second solo album sound like leftovers from the first, "Love Angel Music Baby," which itself was a bit spotty. This results in musical atrocities such as the plastic hip-hop thump of "Yummy" and the painfully autobiographic ballad "Orange County Girl," songs that make "Harajuku Girls" suddenly sound respectable. But just when it feels like the matter is settled, she throws up a handful of dreamy new wave throwbacks like "Early Winter," "Wonderful Life" and "4 in the Morning," leaving the world so irretrievably conflicted that an intervention from Bono might be necessary.

Jay-Z 'Kingdom Come': Aidin Vaziri | You weren't really expecting to see Jay-Z playing bocce ball in Del Boca Vista anytime soon, were you? Just three years after his "final" release, "The Black Album," the New York rapper returns from an early retirement that saw his face popping up in more places than ever. Along with running his own label, building a clothing empire and collecting famous friends, he's also managed to pinch out this comeback effort. Jay certainly spent enough to make it feel like a major event, bringing together high-profile collaborators (John Legend, Beyoncé) and expensive beat-makers (Pharrell Williams, Dr. Dre). But all the money in the world can't disguise the fact that he's done self-congratulatory, name-dropping, booze 'n' bling songs like "I Made It" and "Oh My God" slightly better in the past. But the Chris Martin duet, "Beach Chair," is just weird enough to work. Or is it?