GHOSTFACE KILLAH
More Fish Def Jam ***

The more you listened to Fishscale, the Wu-Tang Clan man's top of the class album from last year, the more you found to marvel at. Rugged street tales, dusty soul grooves and Ghost's own swordsman-like wordplay gave Fishscale a shimmy hip-hop's current crew of fakers and fronters couldn't match. You could view More Fish, then, as the ones that got away, but really it's Dennis Coles making some noise for his Theodore Unit buddies. While there are moments when More Fish turns into just another lame posse album, there are also times when a cut will make you pay attention and, not surprisingly, that usually comes when Ghost himself is on the mic. Block Rock and Ghost Is Back have tough hooks and slippery lines, but it's the remake of Amy Winehouse's You Know I'm No Good, with Ghost showing his soft and sensitive side (and his taste in bath creams), which is the real keeper from this excursion. www.myspace.com/ghostface  Jim Carroll

MOS DEF
True Magic Geffen **

No fanfare, no pre-match hype and, indeed, no album artwork: Mos Def's return to the ring lacks all the razzmatazz that usually comes with high-profile hip-hop releases. And make no mistake about it, despite all his silver screen diversions in recent years and the paucity of new material on wax, Mos Def remains a hip-hop draw, even if it's more for what he once represented (a bridge between the sound's old and new schools) than anything he has produced since the Black on Both Sides debut or his Black Star runnings with Talib Kweli back in the late '90s. True Magic is unlikely to change that shorthand, dogged as it by unimpressive and sloppy production. It's a shame because Mos Def does still possess the flow to deliver some stand-up messages but, as with 2004's patchy New Danger, it's the details that let him down. www.mosdefmusic.com  Jim Carroll