J Puffs Bling

Coinciding with another holiday shopping season is the seventh volume in the Source Presents: Hip-Hop Hits series, released through Def Jam. Like the earlier installments, it provides a decent -- if incomplete -- snapshot of the past year in hip-hop, reaching back to the tail end of the previous calendar year while including tracks that became popular throughout the summer of the year of release. Even though Ludacris ("Act a Fool"), Nelly ("Air Force Ones"), Bone Crusher (the remix of "Neva Scared"), and David Banner ("Like a Pimp") eat up over a quarter of the album, it seems like there aren't enough Southern hits by half. Nevertheless, the disc does tend to stick to the tracks that were most popular, appealing most to those who haven't picked up many full-lengths -- there's Missy Elliott's "Work It," Snoop Dogg's "Beautiful," DMX's "Where the Hood At," and Lil' Kim's "The Jump Off" as well.