Thor Christensen

Brian Harkin / Special to DMN

Big Tuck at his Cedar Hill home

Big Tuck is one big ball of contradictions. On his CDs, the Dallas rapper spits out gritty tales about the thug life. But in real life, he's a college-educated music major who loves Miles Davis and Nirvana. He looks like trouble – 6-5, 250 pounds, with a menacing stone-faced stare. But when he speaks, he's so polite and soft-spoken he's about as threatening as a week-old kitten. He knows what it's like to be homeless, having spent two years sleeping in his 1979 Oldsmobile. Now he lives in an 8,500-square-foot mansion on Joe Pool Lake, complete with palm trees, a sauna and a new Cadillac Escalade in the driveway. These are the spoils of being the most-hyped Dallas rapper since Vanilla Ice.
• Video: See Big Tuck's "Tussle" video

Producer Sir George Martin and his son Giles knew they were handling sacred objects when they began work on Love, the Beatles' new mix-and-mash-up project. As Giles says in the CD's booklet, it felt as if they were "painting a mustache on the Mona Lisa." Well, not quite. Unlike Marcel Duchamp's parody of Da Vinci, Love shows nothing but respect for the Fab Four's songs, an approach that'll help the CD sell millions (as any "new" Beatles album inevitably does) but one that leaves you wondering "what if?"

Jason Janik / Special to DMN

Emily Elbert

The Dallas area has churned out lots of female pop stars, from LeAnn Rimes to Kelly Clarkson to the tabloid magnet Simpson sisters. Emily Elbert would prefer not to be the next name on the list. At 17, the Coppell High School senior has no shortage of talent. Her dusky voice sounds as if it belongs to a soul-jazz singer twice her age, and she wrote all the songs and co-produced Bright Side, her impressive debut CD. The thing is, she'd rather be a musician than a star, thank you.

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Burden Brothers

You couldn't pick a better name for a band fronted by Vaden Todd Lewis than the Burden Brothers. When he first came to fame in the '90s with the Toadies, Mr. Lewis sounded as if he carried the weight of the world on his shoulders. But now, at age 41, the Fort Worth rocker isn't quite the ticking time bomb he used to be. When fans hear the Burden Brothers' second CD, Mercy – due in stores today – they'll be surprised by the Beatles-esque vibe of several tunes.

Pop-rocker Patrice Pike's new CD, Unraveling, came out Tuesday on her own label, Tape Slap.

When Patrice Pike auditioned for Rock Star: Supernova, she already had a good career and a loyal fan base: The decision to pimp herself on a cheesy reality show starring Tommy Lee wasn't easy. "I had these two totally counter experiences in my body," she says. "My gut was like, 'It'll be crazy and fun' and my brain was like, 'What on earth are you doing? You've never even seen a reality show.' " In the end, her gut won. And while the Dallas-raised Ms. Pike lost the competition in September to Canadian singer Lukas Rossi, viewers became instant fans of the tattooed Texas pixie with the big voice.