Music from Grand Theft Auto

If there's one thing the Grand Theft Auto games have gotten right, aside from the sheer heart-hammering thrill of acting out your wildest wise-guy fantasies, it's their carefully curated soundtracks. As heard on faux radio stations throughout each title, they skim everything from pure adrenaline shots like the hot-blooded rap-metal of "Killing In the Name" and ravenous arena rock of "Welcome to the Jungle" to cruise-control cuts like the low-rider-ready funk of "The Payback" and trunk-rattling boom-bap rap of "I Know You Got Soul" and "How I Could Just Kill a Man."

Kinda makes you want to put the controller down and head out on a real highway, right? Wait until you hear our Next Steps.

We're not sure who selects the songs that end up on Grand Theft Auto soundtracks, but we'd like to shake said person's hand. Because whoever decided that the shimmering synths, grinding guitars, and mind-melting vocals of Faith No More's "Midlife Crisis" was a much better selection than an obvious choice like the band's smash single, "Epic," obviously knows their stuff. Other evidence includes the galloping new-wave grooves of "Atomic," "Relax," and "The One Thing," extended old-school edits of Kurtis Blow's "The Breaks" and Afrika Bambaataa's "Renegades of Funk," and Ronnie James Dio's greatest jam outside of his Black Sabbath albums ("Holy Diver").

And you know what? We haven't even gotten to just how deep our Deep Cuts actually are.

The wobbly electro-funk beats and smoother-than-butter flow of Mantronix . . . in a videogame? We must be talking about Grand Theft Auto here, the series that turned videogame soundtracks into an art form. While you've probably heard of Slayer's riff-roasting thrash metal ("Raining Blood"), the classic rock of Joe Cocker ("Woman to Woman," which was later tweaked by Dr. Dre for the 2Pac track "California Love"), and the finer works of Bell Biv DeVoe ("Poison") and Bobby Brown ("Don't Be Cruel"), we dare you to name the Deodato, N.A.S., Romeo Void, and Hashim songs that have also snuck onto GTA's car stereos.

Half the fun of "borrowing" a car in Grand Theft Auto is hearing what's on the radio as you peel out across the pavement and conquer the streets of San Andreas or Liberty City. A simple spin of the dial may land on anything from the Top 40 tunes of Fever 105 (Michael Jackson, the Pointer Sisters) to the adult contemporary cuts of Emotion 98.3 (Toto, Roxy Music) and new-wave nods of Wave 103 (A Flock of Seagulls, Thomas Dolby). And that's just in the Vice City version of the game. Grand Theft Auto IV, for one, also features "DJs" from such stations as the Beat 102.7 (Kanye West, Busta Rhymes) and JNR, a.k.a. Jazz Nation Radio 108.5 (John Coltrane, Charlie Parker). This way you can choose between heavyweight drum breaks and searing horn solos as you speed off into the sunset tailed by a flock of cop cars.