DOOM, the lyrical genius behind one of this year’s best hip-hop albums, Born Like This., is back in the studio. While that’s great news, evidence also indicates that Madlib, his collaborator on one of the best hip-hop albums ever, Madvillainy, is at his side. Details are sparse on the collaboration, but you can check out (NSFW) samples of their new work below.

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Now that all the ridiculous media coverage has settled down, we present a very special edition of the eMusic INdorsement. Here are our favorite tracks from the long, brilliant career of Michael Jackson.

“Blame it on the Boogie”
“Ben”
“I Want You Back”
“Rock With You”
“Human Nature”
“Man in the Mirror”
“P.Y.T.”
“Beat It”
“Billie Jean”
“Smooth Criminal”

As always, you can get your free 25 downloads by signing up for eMusic. Maybe you want to start with your favorite Jackson album? His catalog is now available on eMusic. Let us know what you pick and what you think about our list.

Since Insulinfunk has featured so much great music this week, we thought we’d do something different with the INdorsement. Many of the musicians we feature are available on eMusic, so we’re going to point you in the right directions. Before we get started, let’s remind you that new users can get 25 free downloads when you sign up for the site.

On Monday, we mentioned that Foo Fighters debuted a new song. Foo Fighters’ catalog, including the post-grunge classic The Colour and the Shape, is now available on the site.

Among the other bands we provided updates on this week, Rodeo Ruby Love’s What Loneliness Can Do to You EP, Dent May and His Magnificent Ukelele’s The Good Feeling Music of . . ., and Discovery’s LP. You can also get the two volumes of Tom Waits’s (who Beck interviewed) Early Years compilations.

On to features!… … eMusic INdorsement: Week in Review

Thanks to acts like Justice, Cut Copy, LCD Soundsystem, and a more-popular-than-ever Daft Punk, electronic music has enjoyed something of a renaissance as a pop medium this decade. Inspired by Kid A and lesser-known acts, like Rah Bras, bands like the Faint and the Gossip have abandoned the tried-and-true formula of guitar, bass, and drums. The traditional band formula has lost its status as necessary prerequisite for indie cred or alternative stardom (the unpleasantness of the latter term noted), except for with the most puritanical of rockists.

The unfulfilled promises of big beat’s run throughout the late-90s American charts (e.g. Prodigy’s Fat of the Land, The Chemical Brothers’ Dig Your Own Hole, Fatboy Slim’s You’ve Come a Long Way, Baby) have finally been answered, although more so in quality than in SoundScan quantities. DJs, lappop geeks, and synth nerds are now rock stars capable… … eMusic INdorsement gets eLectronic

One of the greatest still-felt side effects of the independent music revolution of the late 70s and early 80s is the wealth of easily accessible subgenres in contemporary music, which had already splintered and forked its slightly divergent way into several niches. Of the hundreds of hybrids and mutations, the growing species of bands referred to as post-metal, progressive metal, avant-garde metal, or soundscape sludge is one of the most interesting.

The sonic child of genre-pioneers Neurosis, Isis (along with their cousins, such as Red Sparowes, Mastodon, and Opeth) have brought the sound into the 21st century. Isis blend massive guitar riffs and almost inhuman vocal performances with dynamic song structures that travel from most the dangerous cliffs to the calmest ocean bottoms.

Speaking of, 2002’s Oceanic is often seen as the bands tour-de-force. Like Mastodon, Isis’s albums follow themes, and Oceanic’s is… … eMusic INdorsement: 21st-Century Metal

In 2004, hip-hop gave birth to a two-headed hydra to make even Cerberus’s blood run cold: the dastardly duo of Madlib and (MF) DOOM christened Madvillain. DOOM has made a habit of participating in some monumental team-ups in his day, including the low-art genius of The Mouse & The Mask, his collaboration with Danger Mouse, and the yet-to-see-light-of-day-if-it-exists album with Ghostface Killah. Madvillainy is the most left field and trippy of DOOM’s work, thanks to the old-school psychedelia of Madlib’s backing tracks.

The essential track is “Meat Grinder,” one of Thom Yorke’s favorite rap tracks, if that tells you anything. The song intros with a great jazzy drum loop and then fades into one of the simplest bits of the album: basically, a bass line and some Hawaiian guitar hold up DOOM’s dense rhymes.

Also, make sure not to miss “Strange Ways,” which… … eMusic INdorsement Villainy

To accompany our report on Merge Records’ 20th anniversary, this week’s eMusic INdorsement hits Neutral Milk Hotel’s In the Aeroplane, Over the Sea. This 1998 release from members of Athens’s Elephant 6 collective may not only be the best album on eMusic, but possibly the best album ever. Really.

The album features vocalist and songwriter Jeff Magnum’s nasally, scratchy vocals over layers of horns, booming drums, and soft strumming. The production is pretty rough, often resulting in tracks that are too hot and sonically overwhelming. But this is part of the album’s charm. The raw fullness of the audio perfectly compliments the emotional, sometimes perplexing, vocals.

But you don’t have to take our word for it. Go over to eMusic, sign up for your free trial, and sample the album.

After a short hiatus, the eMusic INdorsement is back to hit you with some more great tunes at a great price.

This week, we’re going to recommend the two(!) Los Campesinos! albums on eMusic: their debut, Hold On Now, Youngster . . . , and their follow-up, We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed, both from 2008.

You may have heard the essential track “You! Me! Dancing!” (The band loves exclamation points and parallel couplets.) backing some of this week’s E3 trailers. Game developers (or at least their publishers’ marketing departments) apparently love the catchy riff fleshed out by a punchy xylophone. “My Year in Lists” is also a must-listen from the band, who sound something like a clever Sufjan Stevens on speed. Both tracks appear on Hold On Now.

Insulinfunk previously gave love to We Are Beautiful on our “Best Music of 2008″ list. Let’s go with the… … eMusic INdorsement!

This week marks the first post of a weekly feature from your pals at Insulinfunk. Since we obviously know more about music than you and Emusic is such a great service, we’ll help you out with a weekly recommendation or two. Sometimes it’ll be something new; other times it may be a classic or overlooked gem. Remember, you can get 50 free tracks at Emusic by signing up through Insulinfunk, and after that, the deals are still sweet!

This week, Passion Pit released their first full length, Manners. The group may be this years MGMT: overhyped, but worth the attention for their sugary-but-mature pop tracks. Be sure to sample “Seaweed Song.”

For the uniniated, we recommend Chunk of Change, 2008’s 7-track EP. It features Passion Pit’s essential track, “Sleepyhead,” but the whole release is worth your time and hard-earned download credits. Take Of… … New Feature: Emusic INdorsement