ALBUM OF THE WEEK: Eminem � The Marshall Mathers LP 2 (Shady/Aftermath): For the record, I do not accept this minor triumph as my all-time favorite artist's "sequel" to my all-time favorite album of the 2000s. Let's instead talk about the lack of virtuosos in popular music of the last ten years. Make no mistake, it's fantastic that we've broken so many walls down, that a great rapper can be a bad lyricist, that pop musicians who don't play or write their own songs or even sing without Auto-Tune can get respect for making great art, just like three-chord punks in the 70s proved you could make the world's best rock and roll without guitar lessons.

But let's survey how many prominent Great Players have achieved recent fame, in a world of ensembles like Arcade Fire and true singers relegated to hammy American Idol fates. Jack White, Marnie Stern and Marissa Paternoster (of the band Screaming Females) demonstrate the sort of guitar heroics that require virtuosity rather than a clever working knowledge of the studio, and you could maybe throw in Ezra Koenig (Vampire Weekend) as well. The low-key Earl Sweatshirt and Kendrick Lamar are dexterous if grayscale rappers and Lil Wayne a true unhinged genius, but neither as raw a breather as Nicki Minaj or Twista. tUnE-yArDs' Merrill Garbus isn't quite in league with peak Polly Jean Harvey or Corin Tucker but she does reach heights and find tones outside of most rock vocalists' capabilities. And with all due respect to Janet Weiss and Joe Easley don't start me on the "tastefulness" of current drumming in indie nor mainstream�when's the last time you heard a drum fill?

There are plenty of great players but very few are pushing themselves to the limit like the above-named. In a year where rap doesn't know what it is anymore, Eminem has decided to forego concepts, humor, even hooks (with the exception a happier-than-she-sounds Rihanna on the excellent "The Monster") for the consistently pleasurable and surprising album Tech N9Ne and his Korny ways will never give us. Em twists himself into huge sailor knots and impenetrable thickets that earn the "Rap God" standing even if the "f**"-laced joke content is probably best noticed from a distance, while overseer Rick Rubin challenges himself to make "So Far�" an FM rock collage as dense as any prime Beasties and much more fearless about being cornier. Among other unlikely gambles, The Marshall Mathers LP 2 contains the only Lamar track anyone can call "sunny" and a Nate Ruess chorus making it hard to embrace even the one where he admits to loving his mom. But while the album won't make you laugh once, it never stops fighting, with that blender-like rhyming reaching a peak in a streak from "Survival" to "Asshole" to "Brainless" to "Rap God." Maybe for his next trick he'll do it again without the joyless detachment that's dogged him since people told him the great, insane Encore was too silly. That is, maybe he'll bring back Slim Shady.

Avril Lavigne � Avril Lavigne: She's always paraded the willfully dumb but her last album Goodbye Lullaby was a sin: no fun. On this backtrack she sells out gleefully, with her first throw at EDM a Kawaii anthem called "Hello Kitty" and DGAF duets with her Nickelback paramour (at peak tolerability on "Let Me Go") and Marilyn Manson (a fantastic hypeman on the "Missed me/ Missed me/ Now you gotta kiss me" brat-glam stomp called, what else, "Bad Girl"). She rips off T. Swift's "We Are Never Getting Back Together" on the identical "Bitchin' Summer" and steals Katy Perry's Radiohead-cheapening agenda for "Here's to Never Growing Up." The ballads are serviceable, the opening "Rock n Roll" is a highlight, and the excellent "17" fulfills that other quota: pop.