Rap audiences are not renowned for being easy to please – but it's a daring performer indeed who is willing to stand up and drop lyrics in front of some couple of hundred babies and toddlers. Yes, as television's Rastamouse has brought reggae culture to Ceebeebies viewers, so this week DJ, promoter, teacher and poet Charlie Dark has been breaking down the elements of hip-hop for those who are more pre-school than old-school.

This month's Singles & Downloads leads off with a new one from an absolute kingpin of US pop and hip hop. However, the focus is equally on the backwaters and curious places where other lively varieties of music dwell. From dancehall raucousness to erudite indie, from ranty punk to funk reinterpretations of American minimalist composition, all pop life is here and keenly assessed by Thomas H Green and Joe Muggs.

Aylesbury, a town without a theatre, has built itself one - a gleaming, glass-fronted, smack-you-in-the-eye 1,500-seater, driven and supported by the district council. High Wycombe and Milton Keynes must beware, so thin are the pickings these days for the regional theatres. The pity is that the Ballet Boyz’ show The Talent last night was the only night of decent dance programmed in this amazing new venue for half of 2011.

While the world of indie bands is, with a very few exceptions, colonised by posh kids with well-conditioned hair and earnest agendas, this country's pop is feeling more like the voice of those who actually consume it than it has for many years. The Tinchys, the Tinies and the N-Dubzes might make music of variable quality, but they provide something that ordinary young people can aspire to that is not far removed from their own lives, and have added a dose of youthful vim to the charts to boot.

The last album from Brighton’s The Go! Team, 2007’s Proof of Youth, followed the template set by Thunder, Lightning, Strike, their 2004 debut. AD-HD sample-driven songs met Northern soul and hip hop with call-response vocals and melodies that could have graced any Sixties girl group. All at 80 miles an hour with xylophones and brass. Third time round, Go! Team mainman Ian Parton has stretched out without sacrificing what was great in the first place. Rolling Blackouts is The Go! Team’s best album so far.

This month we have some unjustly hyped rubbish electro-pop, some unjustly ignored brilliant eletcro-pop, some postmodern retro-disco, some dubstep, some grime, some sampledelic New York punk, and, at the top of the pile, one of Britain's brightest young actors proves he's equally adept on the microphone. Thomas H Green and Joe Muggs plough loudly through the lot with glee and the odd barbed word.

2010 saw some major shifts stirring up the UK club music ecosystem and unleashing some fascinating hybrids and variants of existing sounds out into the wild. As the hefty bass of dubstep muscled its way firmly into the heart of the mainstream, everything else was forced to rearrange its position, with some surprising results.

When not one but two street dance crews blasted into Britain’s Got Talent 2009, it felt like a pressure cooker blowing. An ardent, physical and excitingly exact form of dance that had been bubbling away, compressed and hidden, under the surface of British public entertainment exploded. Of the two, Diversity (the eventual winners) and Flawless, it was Flawless’s 10 men who had the almost scarily precise look of a serious dance company, and last night they crowned a massive year for them at the Royal Festival Hall, London, with a full-length show, Chase the Dream, that proves them to be fine instinctive entertainers as well as crack dancers.

This month theartsdesk attempts to answer burning questions like - how much of an egomaniac is Kanye West? Are Take That any good? (Yes, actually - surprisingly for some). Can you tell the difference between Rumer and Duffy? What kind of pencil does Brian Eno resemble - 2B or 6H? Is Sylvie Vartan better than Cilla Black? Plus there's intimate stuff from the vaults of Bruce Springsteen, grooviness from Congotronics, a dull one from Kate Rusby, some splendid bluegrass and an epic 27-CD box set of Fela Kuti. Reviewers are Joe Muggs, Adam Sweeting, Howard Male, Kieron Tyler, Russ Coffey, Bruce Dessau, David Cheal and Peter Culshaw.

Given the somewhat viral nature of Odd Future's rapidly flourishing notoriety, it's both appropriate and a little ironic that their debut UK performance should take place in the basement of a pub in a part of north London where the underground doesn't run. Also known as OFWGKTA (or Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All), this 10-strong self-contained teenage rap conglomerate from Los Angeles has united hip-hop über-nerds, jaded old-schoolers and regular rap fans alike – a remarkable achievement in itself – in praise of unique DIY aesthetic, both musical and visual, inspired by, amongst other things, a love of early Eminem, skateboard culture and the consumption of marijuana.