"Sometimes love comes around and it knocks you down, just get back up, when it knocks you down."

Artist: Keri Hilson ft. Kanye West and Ne-Yo
Song: Knock You Down
Album: In a Perfect World…
Produced by: Danja

Keri Hilson proves you can nod your head to a break-up song while Ne-Yo and Kanye West make weird pilot-airplane references.

OR

"I say you the you the best, you the you the best, you the you the best, you the you the best, you the best I ever had, best I ever had, best I ever had, best I ever had."

Artist: Drake
Song: Best I Ever Had
Album: Best I Ever Had
Produced by: Boi-1da

Drizzy channels Lil Wayne, Kanye and R. Kelly in a track where he gives love to the girl who "holds it down" for him and raps "she call me the referee, cause I be so official" with a straight face.

Last year was supposed to belong to Keri Hilson.

In 2007, Hilson and Timbaland's dance hit The Way I Are was all over radio, in clubs, on phones and even in a McDonald's commercial. After years of behind-the-scenes work with five-member writing team The Clutch (Mary J. Blige, Britney Spears, Ciara), Hilson's glassy vocals put her center-stage. The leggy beauty's debut was scheduled for release that same year, but budget cuts at her label and two lukewarm singles prompted delays. Hilson bided her time with a guest slot on Nas’s Hero and sexy cameos in the videos for Usher’s Love in this Club and Ne-Yo's Miss Independent, all of which helped her stay on the radar.

It may have been worth the wait. Her debut, In a Perfect World..., has already delivered two hit singles, Turnin’ Me On featuring Lil’ Wayne and the sugary Knock You Down featuring Kanye West. Praised by some for its tight songwriting, the album. has also been criticized for overbearing production – primarily handled by Timbaland and Polow Da Don (Usher, Fergie, Ludacris) – and what Rolling Stone calls a lack of "personality."

Having already lived the ups and downs of the entertainment industry, the 26-year-old Hilson is taking it one day at a time: "Five years from now, I hope, I pray that I'm not jaded from the industry because there's so much you have to deal with to remain successful.”

• Love vs. Money, the new album by R&B singer, songwriter and producer The-Dream, is "genuinely odd," according to Rolling Stone, which describes it as "avant-garde dance music and radio-friendly pop." Vibe thinks the man behind "Umbrella" and "Single Ladies" is "not doing anything new, per se—he’s just sampled the best parts of the old." The Boston Globe can't stop raving about it: "Unlike his spotty debut, this is a seamless, brilliantly produced affair featuring his unmatched contemporary pop technique and songwriting craftsmanship."
• American Idol alum Kelly Clarkson "makes nice with the pop machine and takes back the mall while keeping her integrity" on her fourth album, All I Ever Wanted, according to Blender magazine. The follow-up to Clarkson's disappointing My December gets a "B+" from Entertainment Weekly: "Does ['My Life Would Suck Without You'] mean our queen is back? In a word, yes." The Los Angeles Times agrees, calling the album a "generous helping of the Kelly so many love – yes, Photoshopped and slicked up, but with her big, brilliantly accessible heart and voice intact."
• Mexican dancer rockers Kinky flirt with pop on their sixth release, Barracuda. "This is the sweatiest, most accessible record that the band has yet released, which makes its middle third all the more disappointing given the great songs that surround it," laments Popmatters. "How you feel about Kinky’s fourth effort will likely be determined by how you view their overall progression toward more gloss, increased pop, bigger beats and added sonic trendiness (hey, ‘80s British New Wave!)," writes Metromix.
• R&B singer-producer and Timbaland protégé Keri Hilson releases her debut album, In A Perfect World. Slant magazine slams it, calling it "merely passable," before adding: "Hilson needs to do much more than pick fights with Beyoncé to justify her transition from hook girl to solo star." Allmusic echoes the opinion: "If [Hilson] didn't… fill the songs with her beaming personality and casually fluid voice, and didn't have top-level producers providing mostly excellent beats, it would be a mess."
• Masked underground rapper Daniel Dumile (MF DOOM, Madvillain) returns as DOOM with his latest, Born Like This. "After a period of workaholism that threatened overkill, followed by a period of hibernation, Born Like This finds DOOM back to his scalpel-tongued, scatter-mouthed best," observes The Guardian. "While he hasn’t had the breakthrough success many of his contemporaries have had, he is still one of the best around," proclaims Clashmusic.