Philadelphonic (1999)

A magician of sorts, G. Love takes a crazy variety of styles — hip-hop, rural blues, '70s funk, '60s folk — and stirs them into a gumbo that somehow tastes perfect. Philadelphonic is sleeker and more streamlined than its three predecessors (with an evident eye to mainstream consumption), but Love probably remains too genially shaggy, too rough-edged for megastardom. Too bad this won't significantly enlarge his rabid but smallish following. B