Gordon Lightfoot Book, Music and More!

Always provocative, M.I.A. performed pregnant at this year’s Grammy—on her due date. The rap artist’s song “Paper Planes,” featured in the Oscar winning Slumdog Millionaire, was up for record of the year. Now M.I.A., whose occupations also include fashion designer, visual artist and political activist, has released her third studio album and it’s already causing a stir with agit-prop songs like “Born Free” and “The Message.” But the album also features one memorable love song: the reggae-flavored “It Takes a Muscle.”

Drake became a global superstar by baring his soul, expressing personal truths about relationships rather than boasting about guns and drugs. His fifth album, named after his zodiac sign, continues the tradition, with the biggest revelation being his admission of fatherhood on two separate tracks. On “Emotionless,” Drake raps: “I wasn’t hiding my kid from the world, I was hiding the world from my kid.” “We only met two times," he says of Sophie Brussaux, the Frenchwoman who’s rumored to be the mother of his son, before expressing angst about being a single parent. Elsewhere, Drake takes aim at his rivals in the hip-hop world on “Survival” and sums up his success on “Sandra Rose” with the lin...