Chamillionaire, The Sound of Revenge

Major labels have a remarkable ability to stamp the quirks out of rappers as if they were lumps in a carpet. As an associate of Mike Jones and Paul Wall on the booming Houston rap scene, Chamillionaire, the self-proclaimed "mixtape messiah", garnered comparisons to the young Eminem with his lithe flow and mischievous punchlines. But while Eminem was allowed to run riot on his mainstream debut, The Sound of Revenge slots Chamillionaire into a familiar template. Club tracks subscribe to G-Unit's martial melodrama; thoughtful songs are signposted by weepy choruses. Like most hip-hop albums, it's inexplicably long. And yet Chamillionaire has the charisma to wriggle out of this rigid formatting. On Think I'm Crazy, the story of a one-night stand with a shocking twist, he shows enough narrative dynamism to stop you in your tracks.