RECORDINGS Quick Spins

NEW AMERYKAH, PT. 1: 4TH WORLD WAR

Erykah Badu

The last new music we got from Erykah Badu was "Worldwide Underground" -- a paltry, eight-song EP with one hot track, "Back in the Day." That was five years ago. In 2006, she resurfaced in the concert movie "Dave Chappelle's Block Party," still performing that one song. During "Block Party," Erykah looked sad and disconnected, especially when standing next to the ever-beaming Jill Scott. It made you worry.

Turns out she was using all that time to heal: "Sometimes it's hard to move, you see, when you're growing publicly. But if I have to chose between, I choose me," she sings on "New AmErykah, Pt. 1: 4th World War," her third full album of new music in 11 years. After having her second child and becoming a Reiki practitioner, Erykah Badu returns to us now as a high priestess, a healer, an empowered artist. "New AmErykah, Pt. 1" is by far the most aggressive work of her career.

"New AmErykah" begins with an energetic remake of Roy Ayers's cynical anthem "The American Promise," followed by nine absolutely ferocious tracks, all connected by hectic interludes. This album has so much testosterone, Erykah makes the hardest hip-hop artists look as though they're just coloring in the numbers. Above the fracas, Erykah floats her smooth, stinging observations on American dysfunction.

That being said, there's not one hit record on the album. Her current single, "Honey," a great song with a brilliant, self-directed video, has limped up the charts. On the rest of "New AmErykah," Erykah takes her sweet old time getting to a refrain, when there's one at all. You just have to sit there and listen. It doesn't matter. It's good medicine just to hear Erykah do Badu.

-- Dan Charnas

DOWNLOAD THESE :"Honey," "Soldier," "Telephone"

BACKWOODS BARBIE

Dolly Parton

Dolly Parton made her best country records back in the 1970s, before she became Dolly -- a pneumatic and almost mythical crossover creation made from false eyelashes, Nudie suits and construction tape.

Her new disc, "Backwoods Barbie," is intended to signal Parton's return to her roots after years spent wandering in a cultural wilderness of tepid pop albums and Lifetime TV movies. It's a fundamentally warmhearted offering that attempts to merge two things that should never be merged: the sequin-free, "Jolene"-era Dolly and the in-on-the-joke Dolly of 2008. Perhaps realizing that the eternal seriousness of old-school country may now be forever beyond Parton's grasp, "Backwoods Barbie" sticks mostly to rejiggered exercises in mild country swing (the superb "The Lonesomes") and country pop ("Jesus & Gravity," equally great).