top thirteen intelligent & socially conscious songs of oh two
certified souful!
blackalicious - fuck it lets just bring back that horn sound (sinead o'connor remix)
el-p - babylon five mics
talib kweli - hey yall check for the gay-friendly common
the roots - rockin wanna rock (like pink floyd)
kool keith - ok even college radio dudes are embarrassed by me
rjd2 - caught samplin old niggas
common - yo ive been really getting into beechwood sparks lately
dan the automator - lounge pastiche from my latest completely bullshit retro concept album
sage francis - no i'm not! some of my best friends are black!
j5 - golden showers (yes yallin)
fat joe - fat joe vs the volcano (underground mixtape freestyle about racist police)
anticon 'crew' - 03 sigur ros and fun lovin criminals: for the advancement of hiphop
504 boyz f baby and lil wayne - mercy mercy me (the ecology)
27.12.02
24.12.02
merry christmas from 50 cent! he's everyone's pick for star of 03, he's been stabbed by ja rule, and look, he's fit! oh also, he's put out an incredibly hot song featuring two unreleased biggie verses!
19.12.02
word to s reynolds for recognizing "good times" high high high in his singles of the year list and posing the question, "do we need another lox?" - from the two rap singles in his top ten, one is by a solo lox member and the other is by their supposed heirs to the throne of dead-eyed amorallity; we all need the lox style! it reminds me that jada and/or styles have done this two years running (oh my god, 2003: the year of sheek!!!) - 2001 was "we gonna make it" by jada, another hot beat, another pretend invocation of positivity (they ain't gonna make it like in "lose yourself" or some shit!) twisted so ugly that it comes with a negative charge, and ends up just as big when you hear it in a club as if it was really positive! i hope the lox and whoever jacks their style continue making records like this! one other thing though, i can't make myself care how much a rap song sounds like old rave!
17.12.02
girls aloud - "sound of the underground"
christ, i've got so much love in my heart but i really hate all five members of one true voice and four of girls aloud - the ginger one is exempt for mysterious personal reasons! the girls aloud song is good even if it's a bit late for pop music to be taking its cues from shy fx (it would be nice to erect a barrier to stop shy fx/pop traffic going either way) or big beat guitars, but they embarrassed themselves on sm:tv with horrendous outfits and a stilted performance. is this really the pick of the bunch? admittedly though, even after years of toil some pop bands never look comfortable on stage/kids tv shows - the bands who immediately come to mind as happy to perform are s club, strangely, and blue; if anything, blue look too comfortable, entirely unconcerned they might come off as lazy dickheads - especially the one with the blonde hair who always fluffs his miming, who does he think he is?!
christ, i've got so much love in my heart but i really hate all five members of one true voice and four of girls aloud - the ginger one is exempt for mysterious personal reasons! the girls aloud song is good even if it's a bit late for pop music to be taking its cues from shy fx (it would be nice to erect a barrier to stop shy fx/pop traffic going either way) or big beat guitars, but they embarrassed themselves on sm:tv with horrendous outfits and a stilted performance. is this really the pick of the bunch? admittedly though, even after years of toil some pop bands never look comfortable on stage/kids tv shows - the bands who immediately come to mind as happy to perform are s club, strangely, and blue; if anything, blue look too comfortable, entirely unconcerned they might come off as lazy dickheads - especially the one with the blonde hair who always fluffs his miming, who does he think he is?!
12.12.02
9.12.02
ja rule duets vol 2 and 3 (as played on westwood of course!)
lil missy says:
i think the ja rule duets (listen to them!) are cute and not meant in a malicious way: but on saturday night westwood and coolio were being supermean about ja! coolio said that he is going to eat ja rules ass. he wishes!
westwood and coolio also made fun of mary j blige for calling ja rule a genius! i think mary j blige can say what she bloody likes! i think it's really lame to tease someone when they don't have the chance to respond. i personally think that coolio is jealous. he also dissed the source magazine. watch out coolio, i'm mad!
lil missy says:
i think the ja rule duets (listen to them!) are cute and not meant in a malicious way: but on saturday night westwood and coolio were being supermean about ja! coolio said that he is going to eat ja rules ass. he wishes!
westwood and coolio also made fun of mary j blige for calling ja rule a genius! i think mary j blige can say what she bloody likes! i think it's really lame to tease someone when they don't have the chance to respond. i personally think that coolio is jealous. he also dissed the source magazine. watch out coolio, i'm mad!
6.12.02
daniel bedingfield - "if you're not the one"
i was thinking, as i do far too often, of bedingfield's many great tv performances of "gotta get thru this" and wondering why i still feel kind of cheated when he doesnt sing really high for the chorus like in the recorded version. i mean everything else is perfect - he struts around unselfconsciously like he exists on a different plane to all other pop stars! he makes animal faces! he acts like he's practiced every single different way to approach the song so he can flit between them at will! but then the chorus comes in and it plays his recorded vocal on the backing track while bedingfield sings along in a lower octave. i suppose its tough to hit those notes, fair enough, but really it pisses me off!
its the same with "like i love you" - the falsetto is like the key thing in the whole song but justin didn't even attempt it on totp! i honestly think even if the singing was slightly off, it would be so loveable if they just tried it. bedingfield and timberlake both make the kind of music where it seems they're constantly trying to extend beyond the natural range they possess - not just singing but everything involved with the music and image even - so maybe it feels lame to suddenly stop short and be like "oh i'm unafraid to look ridiculous but not that ridiculous!". really they need to sort that out.
(sorry, i didn't say anything about "if you're not the one" but you all know it's good, right!)
i was thinking, as i do far too often, of bedingfield's many great tv performances of "gotta get thru this" and wondering why i still feel kind of cheated when he doesnt sing really high for the chorus like in the recorded version. i mean everything else is perfect - he struts around unselfconsciously like he exists on a different plane to all other pop stars! he makes animal faces! he acts like he's practiced every single different way to approach the song so he can flit between them at will! but then the chorus comes in and it plays his recorded vocal on the backing track while bedingfield sings along in a lower octave. i suppose its tough to hit those notes, fair enough, but really it pisses me off!
its the same with "like i love you" - the falsetto is like the key thing in the whole song but justin didn't even attempt it on totp! i honestly think even if the singing was slightly off, it would be so loveable if they just tried it. bedingfield and timberlake both make the kind of music where it seems they're constantly trying to extend beyond the natural range they possess - not just singing but everything involved with the music and image even - so maybe it feels lame to suddenly stop short and be like "oh i'm unafraid to look ridiculous but not that ridiculous!". really they need to sort that out.
(sorry, i didn't say anything about "if you're not the one" but you all know it's good, right!)
i'm beginning to suspect the dude from the guardian secretly used to co-own fondle 'em records or something, such is his seemingly great stake in the dismantling of top 40 rap convention!
4.12.02
dmx - "x gonna give it to ya"
"i been doing this for nineteen years/niggas wanna fight me, fight these tears". yes. x reclaims his party up crown with a slowed-down intro that makes me laugh with joy every time, but the first time i was like 'omg what is he going to do?!' with the hairs standing up on the back of my neck and everything. well, he's going to bring an utterly incendiary cabaret beat (!) and fuck you up! right now i just want to hear this as communal experience in a club because it will be amazing!
"i been doing this for nineteen years/niggas wanna fight me, fight these tears". yes. x reclaims his party up crown with a slowed-down intro that makes me laugh with joy every time, but the first time i was like 'omg what is he going to do?!' with the hairs standing up on the back of my neck and everything. well, he's going to bring an utterly incendiary cabaret beat (!) and fuck you up! right now i just want to hear this as communal experience in a club because it will be amazing!
21.11.02
20.11.02
jennifer lopez - "jenny from the block"
in winter the radio becomes less important to my listening - the feeling i get in spring and summer that its not only fun but genuinely important to hear what's going on isn't there with the same intensity. if i'm walking with headphones i keep choosing the j timberlake album over radio one; i still wake up to the radio but jesus christ, i swear it's always that shitty, tinkly u2 song playing at the exact moment i become conscious! i'm sure it is partly the drop in quality releases - the only songs i'm really enjoying are "sk8er boi"/"complicated", "dirrty", "heaven is a halfpipe" (which refuses to die a year or more since it's release, and thank god because now i love it so much!) and "jenny from the block".
i don't think any beat this year has been so pleasing and simple to digest - just straight up 'trackmasters do "south bronx" with flutes' executed perfectly to hit the pleasure zones ("south bronx" is still a great beat too). j-lo seems to have found a slinky voice which fits, one that can't be easily attributed to another singer's style, although no doubt its as real/fake as when she kind of sounds like milian or kind of sounds like ashanti or toni braxton etc etc. it probably should have been a monster summer jam, but i'm happy its around now without the baggage of distorted "man i was so happy in july" memories. i'm also thinking this is a more coherent and genuinely enjoyable old/nu face-off than anything on the missy album. i still don't understand why radio is playing the version without styles and jada though!
in winter the radio becomes less important to my listening - the feeling i get in spring and summer that its not only fun but genuinely important to hear what's going on isn't there with the same intensity. if i'm walking with headphones i keep choosing the j timberlake album over radio one; i still wake up to the radio but jesus christ, i swear it's always that shitty, tinkly u2 song playing at the exact moment i become conscious! i'm sure it is partly the drop in quality releases - the only songs i'm really enjoying are "sk8er boi"/"complicated", "dirrty", "heaven is a halfpipe" (which refuses to die a year or more since it's release, and thank god because now i love it so much!) and "jenny from the block".
i don't think any beat this year has been so pleasing and simple to digest - just straight up 'trackmasters do "south bronx" with flutes' executed perfectly to hit the pleasure zones ("south bronx" is still a great beat too). j-lo seems to have found a slinky voice which fits, one that can't be easily attributed to another singer's style, although no doubt its as real/fake as when she kind of sounds like milian or kind of sounds like ashanti or toni braxton etc etc. it probably should have been a monster summer jam, but i'm happy its around now without the baggage of distorted "man i was so happy in july" memories. i'm also thinking this is a more coherent and genuinely enjoyable old/nu face-off than anything on the missy album. i still don't understand why radio is playing the version without styles and jada though!
19.11.02
nas - "made you look"
"this ain't rappin'/this is street-hop"! despite the many, many problems i have with the nas persona, i really can't fuck with signing to murder inc only to release a white label which sounds like vintage paris - no doubt this is an attempt to hold on to the ageing hardcore illmatic fanbase (who've already been strung along for eight whole years) and anyone who is still excited by the "apache" break (me!). it might be cynical but this track is silly, theatrical, brilliant, and maybe the last glimpse ever of a bearable nas, since irv "prove yourself in the charts!" gotti would never let a whole record sound like this. (maybe he forced its white label status!)
"this ain't rappin'/this is street-hop"! despite the many, many problems i have with the nas persona, i really can't fuck with signing to murder inc only to release a white label which sounds like vintage paris - no doubt this is an attempt to hold on to the ageing hardcore illmatic fanbase (who've already been strung along for eight whole years) and anyone who is still excited by the "apache" break (me!). it might be cynical but this track is silly, theatrical, brilliant, and maybe the last glimpse ever of a bearable nas, since irv "prove yourself in the charts!" gotti would never let a whole record sound like this. (maybe he forced its white label status!)
15.11.02
blueprint two: cd two
diamonds are forever
it begins again! with initially low key sounding so-called filler, but you know this has a really good ruff ryder style chorus and goth chords. "young cause I'm thirty-two, dressed like I'm twenty-two/flow like i'm eighteen, do what I wanna do" - that's right man, eighteen till i die! this is really good!
guns n roses
i knew he was gonna say "more guns than roses"! jay needs to step away from the whole biggie thing for a couple of albums after this - i mean the soul on blueprint one was the first thing he did to genuinely move away from all the song styles which big might as well have invented (only relevant with jay because he has constantly pushed himself as successor, most people should probably sound more like biggie) but now this whole album is virtually about him!
anyway - that's right, jay said it! lenny fucking kravitz! fuck you all! i really liked one of his songs once but i forget what it's called, i'm sure it had a better riff than this song, although i like the chorus a lot! like jay just said to lenny stop fucking around and do some of that "cashmere" shit. the first two beats on this cd could also have been on the eminem show.
u don't know (remix)
i was going to say, jesus christ, don't put a remix of the already overrated "u don't know" on here for absolutely no reason, but then as soon as mop start shouting it becomes obvious this beat is the reason jay signed them to roc-a-fella because they sound so perfect! i bet they were asked to rhyme over this beat for audition purposes. honestly i'm not interested in listening to their relentless barrage most of the time, its too tiring, but in the context of this album its a shocking breath of hardcore fresh air! their entire roc debut album will sound exactly like this! did lil fame just say "rock with my cock out/face the crowd and piss off stage"!!!! i will never dismiss mop again.
meet the parents
that was such a great film! serious, i remember seeing it just before christmas 2000 - we had already sat through little nicky the same day and that was pretty good but i was kind of down on big cinema comedy, feeling like, you know, come on just make me laugh please! and then meet the parents has a really tight scenario and the kind of tone where no one can get away without laughing! my favourite part is where ben stiller has to wear those really small swimming trunks! ahh, we've all been there. this is an ok song "city is mine" style.
somehow someway
it's time to get reflective! this has a pretty sped-up sample that is kind of familiar, but it has to be said the whole sped up voice duet thing has about a month left before it gets hugely annoying ("i really mean it" by cam should have ended it!)! is this the album that gets such a bad critical (and maybe commercial) reception that it will kill off all recent roc-related trends? that would be interesting but i don't think this record deserves it in spite of the boring beats on most of cd two's songs so far; i've enjoyed the wildly disjointed feel and the lack of 'progression' because i always resent albums when they sound like they should actually be listened to from start to finish!
this song has great guest spots!scarface's voice is a thing of unnatural beauty and calm, its not even that important what he's saying, i just want to hear him speak all the time right into my ear to give me goosebumps! beanie has a less beautiful voice but sometimes he says good things.
some people hate
"this must be the way the nigga pac felt when he made 'me against the world', 'all eyez on me'/y'all niggaz got me feelin like all eyes on me, me against the world" - worst ad lib ever! this sounds like soul 2 soul and jay has precisely nothing interesting to say about hatas!
blueprint 2
more goth chords! w-w-where did all the fun go? so, its time for jay to reiterate that he dislikes nas and dumb old jaz-o and make an embarrassing austin powers reference in the chorus. nas would never pull that, but to be fair jay would never go for the ultra-lame junior school conceptual tracks ("whoo, what would it feel like if i was a gun!" "what if i did a song like that film memento!" - its like if ras kass actually got famous!) that always turn me off nas. but jigga, get some new enemies please! (why is this the song that is actually called "blueprint 2" like jay is entirely defined by these battles which aren't even real! stop it!)
nigga please
i said fuck the neptunes!
2 many hoes
"yea yea yea i know you rap and your sister spit too/you been callin the office and you can't get through/i understand all that, but now ain't the time/i came to the club to get that off my mind/and all you thugs with your war stories startin to bore me/i ain't tryin to hear about your guts and glory/i'm tryin to hear b.i.g. and some cuts from nore/and you keep talkin over the beat like clue" ouch! predictably, this has the most fun verses on the whole album! but if this is a timbaland beat then its yet more evidence his zen drum programming ability has disappeared. mysterious!
as one
due to jigga fatigue i made jack cable review the last two songs: "bam!!!!!!!!! massive over production, this joint rocks!!! wow!! rell is singing a singy bit AVANTE HARD!!! is jay-z even on this!! who cares it has a sub-house tempo 4-to-the-floor riddim! RIDDIM!! i think that all all rap-hop should in fact be house music, but without the rapping. this jizzoint has a rapper called peedo crack , CONTROVERSIAL!!"
ballad for the fallen soldiers
jack cable sez! "WAR!! a song about soldiers! bravo two zero to any callsign. BRAVO TWO ZERO TO ANY CALLSIGN!!!, crappy slo-mo beats and suck-core synth lines, wheres motherfucking teddy riley bitch when you need him?!?!?!?!?! jay-z loves soldiers, thats why he wrote a ballad about them, what with his sweetheart going off to invade saddam hussein or whatever...it's like ghostface always says- "we eat fish/toss salads and make rap ballads" , but not this rap ballad! w0rd."
man, the three bonus tracks are really good! but they're bonus tracks so they don't count.
diamonds are forever
it begins again! with initially low key sounding so-called filler, but you know this has a really good ruff ryder style chorus and goth chords. "young cause I'm thirty-two, dressed like I'm twenty-two/flow like i'm eighteen, do what I wanna do" - that's right man, eighteen till i die! this is really good!
guns n roses
i knew he was gonna say "more guns than roses"! jay needs to step away from the whole biggie thing for a couple of albums after this - i mean the soul on blueprint one was the first thing he did to genuinely move away from all the song styles which big might as well have invented (only relevant with jay because he has constantly pushed himself as successor, most people should probably sound more like biggie) but now this whole album is virtually about him!
anyway - that's right, jay said it! lenny fucking kravitz! fuck you all! i really liked one of his songs once but i forget what it's called, i'm sure it had a better riff than this song, although i like the chorus a lot! like jay just said to lenny stop fucking around and do some of that "cashmere" shit. the first two beats on this cd could also have been on the eminem show.
u don't know (remix)
i was going to say, jesus christ, don't put a remix of the already overrated "u don't know" on here for absolutely no reason, but then as soon as mop start shouting it becomes obvious this beat is the reason jay signed them to roc-a-fella because they sound so perfect! i bet they were asked to rhyme over this beat for audition purposes. honestly i'm not interested in listening to their relentless barrage most of the time, its too tiring, but in the context of this album its a shocking breath of hardcore fresh air! their entire roc debut album will sound exactly like this! did lil fame just say "rock with my cock out/face the crowd and piss off stage"!!!! i will never dismiss mop again.
meet the parents
that was such a great film! serious, i remember seeing it just before christmas 2000 - we had already sat through little nicky the same day and that was pretty good but i was kind of down on big cinema comedy, feeling like, you know, come on just make me laugh please! and then meet the parents has a really tight scenario and the kind of tone where no one can get away without laughing! my favourite part is where ben stiller has to wear those really small swimming trunks! ahh, we've all been there. this is an ok song "city is mine" style.
somehow someway
it's time to get reflective! this has a pretty sped-up sample that is kind of familiar, but it has to be said the whole sped up voice duet thing has about a month left before it gets hugely annoying ("i really mean it" by cam should have ended it!)! is this the album that gets such a bad critical (and maybe commercial) reception that it will kill off all recent roc-related trends? that would be interesting but i don't think this record deserves it in spite of the boring beats on most of cd two's songs so far; i've enjoyed the wildly disjointed feel and the lack of 'progression' because i always resent albums when they sound like they should actually be listened to from start to finish!
this song has great guest spots!scarface's voice is a thing of unnatural beauty and calm, its not even that important what he's saying, i just want to hear him speak all the time right into my ear to give me goosebumps! beanie has a less beautiful voice but sometimes he says good things.
some people hate
"this must be the way the nigga pac felt when he made 'me against the world', 'all eyez on me'/y'all niggaz got me feelin like all eyes on me, me against the world" - worst ad lib ever! this sounds like soul 2 soul and jay has precisely nothing interesting to say about hatas!
blueprint 2
more goth chords! w-w-where did all the fun go? so, its time for jay to reiterate that he dislikes nas and dumb old jaz-o and make an embarrassing austin powers reference in the chorus. nas would never pull that, but to be fair jay would never go for the ultra-lame junior school conceptual tracks ("whoo, what would it feel like if i was a gun!" "what if i did a song like that film memento!" - its like if ras kass actually got famous!) that always turn me off nas. but jigga, get some new enemies please! (why is this the song that is actually called "blueprint 2" like jay is entirely defined by these battles which aren't even real! stop it!)
nigga please
i said fuck the neptunes!
2 many hoes
"yea yea yea i know you rap and your sister spit too/you been callin the office and you can't get through/i understand all that, but now ain't the time/i came to the club to get that off my mind/and all you thugs with your war stories startin to bore me/i ain't tryin to hear about your guts and glory/i'm tryin to hear b.i.g. and some cuts from nore/and you keep talkin over the beat like clue" ouch! predictably, this has the most fun verses on the whole album! but if this is a timbaland beat then its yet more evidence his zen drum programming ability has disappeared. mysterious!
as one
due to jigga fatigue i made jack cable review the last two songs: "bam!!!!!!!!! massive over production, this joint rocks!!! wow!! rell is singing a singy bit AVANTE HARD!!! is jay-z even on this!! who cares it has a sub-house tempo 4-to-the-floor riddim! RIDDIM!! i think that all all rap-hop should in fact be house music, but without the rapping. this jizzoint has a rapper called peedo crack , CONTROVERSIAL!!"
ballad for the fallen soldiers
jack cable sez! "WAR!! a song about soldiers! bravo two zero to any callsign. BRAVO TWO ZERO TO ANY CALLSIGN!!!, crappy slo-mo beats and suck-core synth lines, wheres motherfucking teddy riley bitch when you need him?!?!?!?!?! jay-z loves soldiers, thats why he wrote a ballad about them, what with his sweetheart going off to invade saddam hussein or whatever...it's like ghostface always says- "we eat fish/toss salads and make rap ballads" , but not this rap ballad! w0rd."
man, the three bonus tracks are really good! but they're bonus tracks so they don't count.
14.11.02
ok, if blueprint two part two the sequel that has no equal isn't on here by tomorrow afternoon then i'll just pretend i refuse to review any cd featuring lenny kravitz and forget about it.
also, hiphopsite news points to something i totally missed on cd one where jay admits to stabbing that motherfucker lance 'un' rivera! its surely time for ja rule to own up to repeatedly attempted-murderizing 50 cent in hilarious fashion!
also, hiphopsite news points to something i totally missed on cd one where jay admits to stabbing that motherfucker lance 'un' rivera! its surely time for ja rule to own up to repeatedly attempted-murderizing 50 cent in hilarious fashion!
12.11.02
blueprint two
the spizzazzz annual album review!
a dream
first track the beat is kind of like the "dream on" track from the eminem show, rock descending bassline, probably some kind of famous sample. i don't know! faith evans sounds good but this is kind of lame as myth-making epic opening track. the main thing is it has the whole first verse of "juicy" actually performed by biggie at the end, what the fuck!? of course it's a brilliant idea, thanks faith, for representing biggie's estate to further your guest appearances! also a very explicit way of introducing the record as jay's version of life after death.
hovi baby
this is one of those bombastic tracks that go absolutely nowhere like specifically "the ruler's back", plus a lot of other b-list roc-a-fella product - time to change that up surely? i have no problem with mediocre filler but it would be cool if they changed the mediocre filler style from album to album! i find all these cymbals and hard kicks incredibly annoying! the problem i'm finding is the copy i downloaded is muddy and ridiculously bass-heavy so i can hardly hear what jay is saying, virtually invalidating this whole review! but nevermind! i can understand the choruses. (this chorus is shit but it's growing on me.)
the watcher 2
you know, a sequel to "the watcher" off chronic 2001! was it just crying out for one?? i dunno, but at least dre is actually on the boards with an even more minimal version of the original beat and a very brief verse. truth hurts causes a stink on the chorus. i don't think i actually like her voice at all! motherfucker it's rakim! sounding very deliberate and like he's trying too hard to project his voice (which is pretty much how he's sounded since the 97 comeback), never fear a burst of spontaniety around ra! this isn't as good or as interesting as the ra track off the 8 mile soundtrack, which suddenly comes into perfect focus two minutes in! i want to put that on right now.
03 bonnie and clyde
beyonce! kind of low key for the first single really? it starts off promising with the "cruisin down a west side high - way!" part, but honestly i haven't been arsed about playing this since first hearing it like a month ago. jay is supposed to come up with song formats that fat joe will try to cop, not the other way round! aspiring to be the new bobby and whitney is utterly heart warming! i'm not sure of the idea behind the allusions to relatively recent rap hits which seem to be all over the album yet, unless it just means jay owns us all.
excuse me miss
the kind of song that makes me just want to go for a coffee and forget this whole thing. sub-"big poppa" seduction beat, rubbish chorus, jay as ll/biggie hybrid - where are the witty, bitchy lines and the dismissive chuckle! this is some "no, i really actually love you" shit, but not in entertaining "hey papi" way.
what they gonna do?
ghetto real rap! crazy synths that aren't really very ear-catching anymore but still do their job nicely! some nice battle rhymes from jay from what i can actually hear! omg it has a fairly insane dancehall coda! this is pushing all my buttons! it claims to feature sean paul but all he does is answer jay on the chorus and mumble in the dancehall part. it reminds me though that i want to hear the sean paul album, and thus it's purpose is served. so far jay's voice is sounding too much like jay from blueprint one when it would be nice to hear him stretch. instead of life after death it might turn out blueprint + vol 2 = blueprint 2 but not as fresh as either obviously.
around the world
soul (we got it!). nothing to do with east 17 or, um, other people who have used this title. anyway this is the first sign of blueprint one's defining idea - 'timeless' soul samples with very little embellishment for jay to insist we respect him over! this format seems to be jay's most universally loved, but they sometimes give off an irritating 'this is bigger than hiphop' vibe, a leap towards a non-rap form of greatness which i don't really give a fuck about. no one is bigger than hiphop! fleeting rap greatness is eight million times more fun! still, this is a catchy tune.
poppin' tags
bounce! jay rhyming 75/150bpm double-time is perhaps the one unimpeachable, always-gold formula in all of music. i mean "big pimpin", "nigga what", "is that your bitch" = gold! i can't decide whether this is up to that standard after one listen, cuz although jay's verse sounds eye-watering, the track is trying to bring together raised-eyebrow outkast chorus style with the sighing soul blueprint thing! and bounce! it's rare when bounce productions can bring in any kind of true organic element and make it work; even beautiful string samples sound lame with stutter kicks (cf. any brit-hop attempt at bounce, the new trina single) - i think outkast have probably done it well at some point but i can't remember. oh shit, all that is irrelevent because twista just started spitting! i love twista!
fuck all night
"till we both start yawning"! nothing to do with mocky but quite sleazy all the same. bizzare lift from the beginning of "you don't have to call" by usher so jay can riff on it for the pre-chorus. this leery horny-parody beat works very well! it appears to be beanie sigel on the chorus in pervoid sing-rap style - why not just actually get usher? is he too much of a prude to come out and say he wants to fuck all night? "just keep your mouth shut/we can do this again/bring a friend" oh!
the bounce
zzzzz neptunes zzzzz blah blah fuck them. (important fact: this is not bounce.)
i did it my way
'omg he said "vamoose"'/'mob ties like sinatra' bullshit extended to a whole song - unnecessary yes? but also strangely touching, even if this is the most fucked sound-quality-wise so far, the bass is killing my speakers! this is the end of cd one, which scares me as to how the end of cd two can be even more final than this!
cd two coming tonight or tomorrow morning!
the spizzazzz annual album review!
a dream
first track the beat is kind of like the "dream on" track from the eminem show, rock descending bassline, probably some kind of famous sample. i don't know! faith evans sounds good but this is kind of lame as myth-making epic opening track. the main thing is it has the whole first verse of "juicy" actually performed by biggie at the end, what the fuck!? of course it's a brilliant idea, thanks faith, for representing biggie's estate to further your guest appearances! also a very explicit way of introducing the record as jay's version of life after death.
hovi baby
this is one of those bombastic tracks that go absolutely nowhere like specifically "the ruler's back", plus a lot of other b-list roc-a-fella product - time to change that up surely? i have no problem with mediocre filler but it would be cool if they changed the mediocre filler style from album to album! i find all these cymbals and hard kicks incredibly annoying! the problem i'm finding is the copy i downloaded is muddy and ridiculously bass-heavy so i can hardly hear what jay is saying, virtually invalidating this whole review! but nevermind! i can understand the choruses. (this chorus is shit but it's growing on me.)
the watcher 2
you know, a sequel to "the watcher" off chronic 2001! was it just crying out for one?? i dunno, but at least dre is actually on the boards with an even more minimal version of the original beat and a very brief verse. truth hurts causes a stink on the chorus. i don't think i actually like her voice at all! motherfucker it's rakim! sounding very deliberate and like he's trying too hard to project his voice (which is pretty much how he's sounded since the 97 comeback), never fear a burst of spontaniety around ra! this isn't as good or as interesting as the ra track off the 8 mile soundtrack, which suddenly comes into perfect focus two minutes in! i want to put that on right now.
03 bonnie and clyde
beyonce! kind of low key for the first single really? it starts off promising with the "cruisin down a west side high - way!" part, but honestly i haven't been arsed about playing this since first hearing it like a month ago. jay is supposed to come up with song formats that fat joe will try to cop, not the other way round! aspiring to be the new bobby and whitney is utterly heart warming! i'm not sure of the idea behind the allusions to relatively recent rap hits which seem to be all over the album yet, unless it just means jay owns us all.
excuse me miss
the kind of song that makes me just want to go for a coffee and forget this whole thing. sub-"big poppa" seduction beat, rubbish chorus, jay as ll/biggie hybrid - where are the witty, bitchy lines and the dismissive chuckle! this is some "no, i really actually love you" shit, but not in entertaining "hey papi" way.
what they gonna do?
ghetto real rap! crazy synths that aren't really very ear-catching anymore but still do their job nicely! some nice battle rhymes from jay from what i can actually hear! omg it has a fairly insane dancehall coda! this is pushing all my buttons! it claims to feature sean paul but all he does is answer jay on the chorus and mumble in the dancehall part. it reminds me though that i want to hear the sean paul album, and thus it's purpose is served. so far jay's voice is sounding too much like jay from blueprint one when it would be nice to hear him stretch. instead of life after death it might turn out blueprint + vol 2 = blueprint 2 but not as fresh as either obviously.
around the world
soul (we got it!). nothing to do with east 17 or, um, other people who have used this title. anyway this is the first sign of blueprint one's defining idea - 'timeless' soul samples with very little embellishment for jay to insist we respect him over! this format seems to be jay's most universally loved, but they sometimes give off an irritating 'this is bigger than hiphop' vibe, a leap towards a non-rap form of greatness which i don't really give a fuck about. no one is bigger than hiphop! fleeting rap greatness is eight million times more fun! still, this is a catchy tune.
poppin' tags
bounce! jay rhyming 75/150bpm double-time is perhaps the one unimpeachable, always-gold formula in all of music. i mean "big pimpin", "nigga what", "is that your bitch" = gold! i can't decide whether this is up to that standard after one listen, cuz although jay's verse sounds eye-watering, the track is trying to bring together raised-eyebrow outkast chorus style with the sighing soul blueprint thing! and bounce! it's rare when bounce productions can bring in any kind of true organic element and make it work; even beautiful string samples sound lame with stutter kicks (cf. any brit-hop attempt at bounce, the new trina single) - i think outkast have probably done it well at some point but i can't remember. oh shit, all that is irrelevent because twista just started spitting! i love twista!
fuck all night
"till we both start yawning"! nothing to do with mocky but quite sleazy all the same. bizzare lift from the beginning of "you don't have to call" by usher so jay can riff on it for the pre-chorus. this leery horny-parody beat works very well! it appears to be beanie sigel on the chorus in pervoid sing-rap style - why not just actually get usher? is he too much of a prude to come out and say he wants to fuck all night? "just keep your mouth shut/we can do this again/bring a friend" oh!
the bounce
zzzzz neptunes zzzzz blah blah fuck them. (important fact: this is not bounce.)
i did it my way
'omg he said "vamoose"'/'mob ties like sinatra' bullshit extended to a whole song - unnecessary yes? but also strangely touching, even if this is the most fucked sound-quality-wise so far, the bass is killing my speakers! this is the end of cd one, which scares me as to how the end of cd two can be even more final than this!
cd two coming tonight or tomorrow morning!
4.11.02
chart.
christina milian has the most perfect bubblegum r'n'b voice, she makes all her sustained proper singing bits really pretty to offset the chewy latina thing and her own singles are great - so great that spizzazzz was started just so we could say she's fucking cool. but now she's slumming it with passive-aggressive romeo and using the "top billin'" beat, which isn't automatically a bad thing i suppose, i just can't imagine romeo making a good hiphop-tempo record ever (he has the second-worst "seductive" style in all of music behind s****y [yay, he's at number ten!], though it's not drastically different from nelly's delicate flow on "dilemma" - maybe its romeo's annoying face!). milian makes it worth hearing but she's showing her lack of world-beating success by appearing at all - this shouldn't matter but i don't want to feel like i'm listening to second rate pop by second rate pop stars! it's not like j lo would have done this song, and that's the barometer by which milian must be judged (not always counting actual quality of music).
only "beautiful stranger" has transcended madonna's horribly coached voice in like the past eight years; "die another day" was ear-pricking for a few listens but all the melodrama is lame and now i don't want to play it again ever.
hearing that whitney's new song was called "whatchulookinat", i wanted to believe it would be a dancehall beat made entirely from gunshot noises - the chorus would be a brief silence before whitney screamed "whatchu lookin at!? (bang! bang!)" like five or six times, and the verses would be all about which haters she'd like to shoot with big motherfucking guns! and oh look, the sweaty-lipped, paranoid lyrics of the released song really are scary, even if the production is some unremarkable puffy-ness. there was surely a choice to be made on this comeback: to present a 'same as it ever was/i've been doing this for years' classic vibe where all her problems are put aside to bask in the glory of being a soul diva; or to address everyone who's fucked with her, a tactic which can only make her seem even crazier! can you guess which path she chose?? (she even explicitly tries to alienate everyone who's not in her "strong following" of good-hearted whitney obsessives!)
amerie (at number forty!) faces the plight of most american urban acts who don't get picked up for heavy a-list radio one love - a shame of course cuz "why don't we fall in love" brings the drama nicely, even if it's more of a summer melancholy style than winter chill (the video is set on the first day of summer, you dumbo marketing fucks!). i suppose the disappointing sales are mostly to do with the lack of having anything familiar to hang it on, like a nep beat or a cameo by a rapper who is properly famous here, which ludacris still isn't, thank christ. i wish "grindin" would get released over here because i can't even fathom whether it would do well or not. that's exciting!
all the other new entries are impossibly bad.
christina milian has the most perfect bubblegum r'n'b voice, she makes all her sustained proper singing bits really pretty to offset the chewy latina thing and her own singles are great - so great that spizzazzz was started just so we could say she's fucking cool. but now she's slumming it with passive-aggressive romeo and using the "top billin'" beat, which isn't automatically a bad thing i suppose, i just can't imagine romeo making a good hiphop-tempo record ever (he has the second-worst "seductive" style in all of music behind s****y [yay, he's at number ten!], though it's not drastically different from nelly's delicate flow on "dilemma" - maybe its romeo's annoying face!). milian makes it worth hearing but she's showing her lack of world-beating success by appearing at all - this shouldn't matter but i don't want to feel like i'm listening to second rate pop by second rate pop stars! it's not like j lo would have done this song, and that's the barometer by which milian must be judged (not always counting actual quality of music).
only "beautiful stranger" has transcended madonna's horribly coached voice in like the past eight years; "die another day" was ear-pricking for a few listens but all the melodrama is lame and now i don't want to play it again ever.
hearing that whitney's new song was called "whatchulookinat", i wanted to believe it would be a dancehall beat made entirely from gunshot noises - the chorus would be a brief silence before whitney screamed "whatchu lookin at!? (bang! bang!)" like five or six times, and the verses would be all about which haters she'd like to shoot with big motherfucking guns! and oh look, the sweaty-lipped, paranoid lyrics of the released song really are scary, even if the production is some unremarkable puffy-ness. there was surely a choice to be made on this comeback: to present a 'same as it ever was/i've been doing this for years' classic vibe where all her problems are put aside to bask in the glory of being a soul diva; or to address everyone who's fucked with her, a tactic which can only make her seem even crazier! can you guess which path she chose?? (she even explicitly tries to alienate everyone who's not in her "strong following" of good-hearted whitney obsessives!)
amerie (at number forty!) faces the plight of most american urban acts who don't get picked up for heavy a-list radio one love - a shame of course cuz "why don't we fall in love" brings the drama nicely, even if it's more of a summer melancholy style than winter chill (the video is set on the first day of summer, you dumbo marketing fucks!). i suppose the disappointing sales are mostly to do with the lack of having anything familiar to hang it on, like a nep beat or a cameo by a rapper who is properly famous here, which ludacris still isn't, thank christ. i wish "grindin" would get released over here because i can't even fathom whether it would do well or not. that's exciting!
all the other new entries are impossibly bad.
29.10.02
joe budden - "focus"
wow. pharaohe monch is trapped in rawkus semi-limbo so def jam had to sign his thug soundalike instead!* i love it when they try to pull shit like this because it normally results in a few brilliant tracks: cru (featuring the soundalikes of snoop, busta and um, the high-pitched dude from lords of the underground [unless it was him!]) put out one of my fave 12s ever on def jam ("just another case"/"pronto" ), and they were utter nobodies! it follows with "focus" because this beat is incredible, all nasty broken funk micro-samples taken apart and reconstructed to work on the dancefloor and fit with budden's flow. also it works with the "grindin"-inspired nu hardcore rap movement which will hopefully genuinely exist soon if it gets talked up enough - i suppose the link isn't immediately obvious, but i have the same kind of involuntary "finally! some real rap!!" reaction to both songs.
* this is at least fifty per cent true ok!
wow. pharaohe monch is trapped in rawkus semi-limbo so def jam had to sign his thug soundalike instead!* i love it when they try to pull shit like this because it normally results in a few brilliant tracks: cru (featuring the soundalikes of snoop, busta and um, the high-pitched dude from lords of the underground [unless it was him!]) put out one of my fave 12s ever on def jam ("just another case"/"pronto" ), and they were utter nobodies! it follows with "focus" because this beat is incredible, all nasty broken funk micro-samples taken apart and reconstructed to work on the dancefloor and fit with budden's flow. also it works with the "grindin"-inspired nu hardcore rap movement which will hopefully genuinely exist soon if it gets talked up enough - i suppose the link isn't immediately obvious, but i have the same kind of involuntary "finally! some real rap!!" reaction to both songs.
* this is at least fifty per cent true ok!
23.10.02
craig david - "what's your flava"
i'm easily one of the world's biggest supporters of compression technology which flattens everything on the radio and 'ruins' all modern rock albums (= makes them all equally good) but this shit is ridiculous! when i think of this song in my head i imagine like a really overwhelming spazz p-funk sound but when it gets played it's actually kind of weedy and completely fails to move me. also fails to capitalize on what makes craig david the saviour of brit soul by hardly letting him sing at all. wtf! i suppose the chorus does it's catchy/annoying job, but is it really a positive thing if everyone is singing it to each other just to make fun of him?
i'm easily one of the world's biggest supporters of compression technology which flattens everything on the radio and 'ruins' all modern rock albums (= makes them all equally good) but this shit is ridiculous! when i think of this song in my head i imagine like a really overwhelming spazz p-funk sound but when it gets played it's actually kind of weedy and completely fails to move me. also fails to capitalize on what makes craig david the saviour of brit soul by hardly letting him sing at all. wtf! i suppose the chorus does it's catchy/annoying job, but is it really a positive thing if everyone is singing it to each other just to make fun of him?
21.10.02
ashanti - "happy"
"it's the world's most talented record label!"
for some reason when i heard this maybe the fourth or fifth time, everything about ashanti suddenly made sense, even her man-brows and erratic fashion sense (don't ask me to explain how they make sense in this new light!). "happy" follows a very particular lineage which probably began with the mary jane girls' "all night long" - squidgy, cartoony drum hits (can drums be light hearted?!); bittersweet tinkly melody; swoony, aching vocals and a subject matter which makes me sad because of course how long could ashanti remain this elated about being in love? making the lyrics so single-mindedly positive can only highlight any doubts about the future/love/obsession which remain unspoken. (yes, i don't know what the fuck i expect from a song called "happy" either.)
all this can make ashanti's blank style a virtue - if she had genuine presence i might not be able to project so many feelings onto this song! gotti was working pretty much the same textures on "i'm real", which is really good too, but this fits together so nicely that i'm hearing all murder inc tunes differently, and even enjoying the relentless whooshy gloop fx shrouding all the recent hits. (especially the backwards-cymbal-building-to-first-snare-hit effect at the start of "down 4 u" which is the best thing ever!)
"it's the world's most talented record label!"
for some reason when i heard this maybe the fourth or fifth time, everything about ashanti suddenly made sense, even her man-brows and erratic fashion sense (don't ask me to explain how they make sense in this new light!). "happy" follows a very particular lineage which probably began with the mary jane girls' "all night long" - squidgy, cartoony drum hits (can drums be light hearted?!); bittersweet tinkly melody; swoony, aching vocals and a subject matter which makes me sad because of course how long could ashanti remain this elated about being in love? making the lyrics so single-mindedly positive can only highlight any doubts about the future/love/obsession which remain unspoken. (yes, i don't know what the fuck i expect from a song called "happy" either.)
all this can make ashanti's blank style a virtue - if she had genuine presence i might not be able to project so many feelings onto this song! gotti was working pretty much the same textures on "i'm real", which is really good too, but this fits together so nicely that i'm hearing all murder inc tunes differently, and even enjoying the relentless whooshy gloop fx shrouding all the recent hits. (especially the backwards-cymbal-building-to-first-snare-hit effect at the start of "down 4 u" which is the best thing ever!)
15.10.02
big brovaz - "nu flow"
big brovaz are to outkast as spooks are to the fugees - this is some lovable-schlub-who'll-never-quite-make-it loser music. i mean by now i suspect even people who loved "the whole world" when it came out just want to forget it happened, but bb are apparently convinced the bouncy circus beat is the future of urban music! it sounds like maybe they're a perfectly competent uk garage crew (none of the mcs are really awful!) who don't know where to go now nobody is allowed to make straight ukg records. (when was the meeting which decided this??)
big brovaz are to outkast as spooks are to the fugees - this is some lovable-schlub-who'll-never-quite-make-it loser music. i mean by now i suspect even people who loved "the whole world" when it came out just want to forget it happened, but bb are apparently convinced the bouncy circus beat is the future of urban music! it sounds like maybe they're a perfectly competent uk garage crew (none of the mcs are really awful!) who don't know where to go now nobody is allowed to make straight ukg records. (when was the meeting which decided this??)
blue - "one love"
they just won't give up on this exact same song they've pushed three times now! it's lucky the song is pure fucking gold - super-orthodox mid 90s r'n'b with embarrassing lyrics and moments which can break out and catch you by surprise, like the strings and the "hypnotize" rip on "fly by" and the part on this where blue-dude's vocal gets all intense: "i refuse to give up/i refuse to give in". calm down you're scaring us! this genuinely hit me in the gut today though.
they just won't give up on this exact same song they've pushed three times now! it's lucky the song is pure fucking gold - super-orthodox mid 90s r'n'b with embarrassing lyrics and moments which can break out and catch you by surprise, like the strings and the "hypnotize" rip on "fly by" and the part on this where blue-dude's vocal gets all intense: "i refuse to give up/i refuse to give in". calm down you're scaring us! this genuinely hit me in the gut today though.
3.10.02
ms dynamite is worried about.. i mean i'm worried about your mental health, dude! any time craig david and ms dynamite are brought up it's like you slip into this funny roleplay psychosis! perhaps its time you stopped living vicariously through the lives of britain's leading urban pop stars. i don't want to make a big deal out of it...
madonna - "die another day"
wow, this is just like how i imagine one of jack cable's freaky music dreams to sound! i'm thinking specifically of some kind of pub meeting between madonna and daniel bedingfield where they perform an oppressively melodramatic version of "james dean". (madge is the dennis hopper of the music scene.)
wow, this is just like how i imagine one of jack cable's freaky music dreams to sound! i'm thinking specifically of some kind of pub meeting between madonna and daniel bedingfield where they perform an oppressively melodramatic version of "james dean". (madge is the dennis hopper of the music scene.)
xzibit ft nate dogg - "multiply"
xzibit has distinguished himself recently by getting producers to build weirdo beats - like the clanking, broken beat tech-horrorcore-for-02 style on "multiply" (man vs machine, see!) - and then rhyming like it's just another verse on "bitch please", seemingly unaware of the shuffle thats going on behind him. i think it's a fun concept: xzibit testing himself like "let's see how fucked up a beat has to be to derail my juggernaut rhyme style!". all three verses on this are contructed beautifully, all a great summation of his semi-outsider "i work harder than you" persona (i wouldn't mind if he sold out but x is the most convincing no-sell-out commercial rapper ever!). it's a shame the wasting nate dogg's awesome talent trend continues though!
anyway, x's new album = dre came back again already!
xzibit has distinguished himself recently by getting producers to build weirdo beats - like the clanking, broken beat tech-horrorcore-for-02 style on "multiply" (man vs machine, see!) - and then rhyming like it's just another verse on "bitch please", seemingly unaware of the shuffle thats going on behind him. i think it's a fun concept: xzibit testing himself like "let's see how fucked up a beat has to be to derail my juggernaut rhyme style!". all three verses on this are contructed beautifully, all a great summation of his semi-outsider "i work harder than you" persona (i wouldn't mind if he sold out but x is the most convincing no-sell-out commercial rapper ever!). it's a shame the wasting nate dogg's awesome talent trend continues though!
anyway, x's new album = dre came back again already!
30.9.02
omg it's the charts!
it would seem not even a bizzare "let us celebrate the opening of the uk branch of def jam" remix of "southern hospitality" featuring ms dynamite could entice people to buy the ludacris single, but i think that's cuz "saturday" is as joyless as anything off his last album - it doesn't matter how much you talk about arses or have cooing ooh ooh choruses, we know you're a manic depressive, luda! (for more proof see mtv's diary of ludacris thing.) (to be fair it might just be a case of him not knowing exactly where to go after the early, funny ones.)
i just realized all the stuff i missed during spizzazzz downtime, like all the things i wanted to say about how appleton (i had a "fantasy" about never having to hear their song!) and pink and ronan and possibly others were all over that unrocking digi-rock sound i invented months ago! but now the moment has passed, so instead: wow, eve only at number six! i still like "gangsta lovin'" quite a lot, it's nice to imagine if all irv gotti choruses were sung by alicia, but surely this was eve's moment to step up to nelly's league with some perfectly realized impact pop! (eve-olution = dre fell off again!)
what is the point of trucks if their embarrassing brit-wheatus novelty rock only reaches number 35?? busted, on the other hand, are amazing and have exceeded expectation. i just listened to a brief clip of the new garbage single, it sounded ok but there was no goth shit. it reminded me of the fc kristhuna milian bootleg i wasted four hours making.
it would seem not even a bizzare "let us celebrate the opening of the uk branch of def jam" remix of "southern hospitality" featuring ms dynamite could entice people to buy the ludacris single, but i think that's cuz "saturday" is as joyless as anything off his last album - it doesn't matter how much you talk about arses or have cooing ooh ooh choruses, we know you're a manic depressive, luda! (for more proof see mtv's diary of ludacris thing.) (to be fair it might just be a case of him not knowing exactly where to go after the early, funny ones.)
i just realized all the stuff i missed during spizzazzz downtime, like all the things i wanted to say about how appleton (i had a "fantasy" about never having to hear their song!) and pink and ronan and possibly others were all over that unrocking digi-rock sound i invented months ago! but now the moment has passed, so instead: wow, eve only at number six! i still like "gangsta lovin'" quite a lot, it's nice to imagine if all irv gotti choruses were sung by alicia, but surely this was eve's moment to step up to nelly's league with some perfectly realized impact pop! (eve-olution = dre fell off again!)
what is the point of trucks if their embarrassing brit-wheatus novelty rock only reaches number 35?? busted, on the other hand, are amazing and have exceeded expectation. i just listened to a brief clip of the new garbage single, it sounded ok but there was no goth shit. it reminded me of the fc kristhuna milian bootleg i wasted four hours making.
26.9.02
avril lavigne - "complicated"
this was way better when i had only experienced it on my super-tinny high-end-only tv (with strangely disappointing not-as-good-as-it-should-be avril and friends trash mall video) and i could make up my own chords and bassline without the tyrany of hearing what is actually played - i heard it on the radio for the first time today and the real chords are rubbish! but there are things i still like: avril is of course already queen of the winsome, catch-in-the-throat vocal thing, used so ruthlessly and efficiently on "complicated" that it becomes like one of the many perfect elements of linkin park super rock! i hope avril continues to refine the real-instrument-pop formula until all the shitty things have been removed. (you know, like when the singer tries to impart their personality! and everything about the nick carter song!)
i want to try and record my version of the song with the right bassline.
this was way better when i had only experienced it on my super-tinny high-end-only tv (with strangely disappointing not-as-good-as-it-should-be avril and friends trash mall video) and i could make up my own chords and bassline without the tyrany of hearing what is actually played - i heard it on the radio for the first time today and the real chords are rubbish! but there are things i still like: avril is of course already queen of the winsome, catch-in-the-throat vocal thing, used so ruthlessly and efficiently on "complicated" that it becomes like one of the many perfect elements of linkin park super rock! i hope avril continues to refine the real-instrument-pop formula until all the shitty things have been removed. (you know, like when the singer tries to impart their personality! and everything about the nick carter song!)
i want to try and record my version of the song with the right bassline.
6.9.02
the tamperer - "feel it" (1998)
proving there really were a lot of chart-dance half-forgotten classics in the nineties! deadpan vocals from the mad woman who wore like no clothes on totp, and that fist-pumping casio-synth-string melody that apparently reminded some people of christmas (!?) - actually it always made me think of "banned from tv" by noreaga since they were out around the same time (tamperer is the swizz beats of house! no really, that works on many levels) - the key thing here is the drums are so exhilaratingly lumbering and almost de-tuned it might as well be rock!
proving there really were a lot of chart-dance half-forgotten classics in the nineties! deadpan vocals from the mad woman who wore like no clothes on totp, and that fist-pumping casio-synth-string melody that apparently reminded some people of christmas (!?) - actually it always made me think of "banned from tv" by noreaga since they were out around the same time (tamperer is the swizz beats of house! no really, that works on many levels) - the key thing here is the drums are so exhilaratingly lumbering and almost de-tuned it might as well be rock!
4.9.02
ol dirty bastard - "brooklyn zoo" (1995)
this record is amazing yes, but if you pretend like you've never heard of the wu and you don't know odb's troubled history so you can't equate his wacky flow with drug use or being insane then it's the best thing ever of all time! s trife once claimed its "like not even music!" and the dude has a point; "brooklyn zoo" is a ridiculous, hysterical manifestation of why it's fun to listen/learn the words to freestyles on kay slay mixtapes and shout along, and it's even better if you are looking at your friends so you can shout the words at each other. it's not so much a song as a beautiful communal experience!
this record is amazing yes, but if you pretend like you've never heard of the wu and you don't know odb's troubled history so you can't equate his wacky flow with drug use or being insane then it's the best thing ever of all time! s trife once claimed its "like not even music!" and the dude has a point; "brooklyn zoo" is a ridiculous, hysterical manifestation of why it's fun to listen/learn the words to freestyles on kay slay mixtapes and shout along, and it's even better if you are looking at your friends so you can shout the words at each other. it's not so much a song as a beautiful communal experience!
2.9.02
green day - "when i come around" (1995)
this isn't even on an i-played-this-over-and-over-when-i-was-fourteen tip either, i just listened to it and it sounds better than ever! also it was really good when i was fourteen. green day deserve to be on this list because they probably helped a lot of other chart-punk bands get signed to major labels who gave them money for proper production with big snare sounds - and by extension get played on the radio. it means green day are partly responsible for a glut of beautiful radio songs, the kind which might not be as cool if you actually bought them, where the context is so special and often unexpected that they are easy to treasure beyond breaking the sound apart to tell what it is you like. i don't know why chart-punk is so good for carrying this kind of feeling, its probably all the hardcore yearning going on. anyway "when i come around" isn't even chart-punk, it's sweet-natured grunge pop, a woefully under-explored avenue i wish i could hear on the radio more!
this isn't even on an i-played-this-over-and-over-when-i-was-fourteen tip either, i just listened to it and it sounds better than ever! also it was really good when i was fourteen. green day deserve to be on this list because they probably helped a lot of other chart-punk bands get signed to major labels who gave them money for proper production with big snare sounds - and by extension get played on the radio. it means green day are partly responsible for a glut of beautiful radio songs, the kind which might not be as cool if you actually bought them, where the context is so special and often unexpected that they are easy to treasure beyond breaking the sound apart to tell what it is you like. i don't know why chart-punk is so good for carrying this kind of feeling, its probably all the hardcore yearning going on. anyway "when i come around" isn't even chart-punk, it's sweet-natured grunge pop, a woefully under-explored avenue i wish i could hear on the radio more!
31.8.02
capleton - "tour" (remix) (1994)
look, it's capleton and he's making the sound that busta rhymes imagines he's making when he does the jamaica-fied thing. he's spitting over the "children's story" beat (this is way better than "children's story" though!) with added wild fx at the end of every 4th bar; and capleton ends every line on the snare with his crew shouting along like "come back in jamaica everything inseCURE!/rich a get rich and the poor a get POOR!" (oh no, it's like the dancehall beastie boys!); and there's inserts of dj kool's "hold up, wait a minute" pointlessly after every chorus, as if they had to prove this is a party record! so why is it so good? i don't know at all, it just sounds ridiculously energized, furious, the record i've maybe had the most fun dancing to ever, something that feels special to me when i think of it (even if i first heard it through funkmaster flex). isn't that a good enough reason??
look, it's capleton and he's making the sound that busta rhymes imagines he's making when he does the jamaica-fied thing. he's spitting over the "children's story" beat (this is way better than "children's story" though!) with added wild fx at the end of every 4th bar; and capleton ends every line on the snare with his crew shouting along like "come back in jamaica everything inseCURE!/rich a get rich and the poor a get POOR!" (oh no, it's like the dancehall beastie boys!); and there's inserts of dj kool's "hold up, wait a minute" pointlessly after every chorus, as if they had to prove this is a party record! so why is it so good? i don't know at all, it just sounds ridiculously energized, furious, the record i've maybe had the most fun dancing to ever, something that feels special to me when i think of it (even if i first heard it through funkmaster flex). isn't that a good enough reason??
29.8.02
limp bizkit f method man - n2gether now (1999)
thats right i said it!! ninety nine was such a golden twelve months for premier that in between so ghetto and the only mos def track i can still listen to he could give this delicately hardcore beat to a fucking metal band and i'd still love it. its not a hard jam to take apart, the best parts are the descending shaolin flourish and marley marl/early bad boy single random bell squelch thing, but it just has that superb eternal session feel, like a giant lineup of every rapper on the planet could lurk on it for hours and approach the shit from like nine million crazy styles. besides all that it needs to be on the list for historical importance because its 1) premo's only successful summer jam ever and 2) the first ever rap rock track to totally get rid of guitars, which was mindblowingly revolutionary and created the enviroment for the current linkin park remix cd which is the future of pop music
i wish i had more to say on the lyrics though because i cant stand fuckers who skip them to talk about the beat but both mcs are almost see-thru, i bet meth himself forgot that weak verse before he left the booth and f durst tries really hard but his rap voice is toxic like that cleaning fluid in school hallways
of course because hes white and sings in a rock band that isnt british and 'spirally' all the skinny french guys who dig hiphop bugged and said the unexpected collab was because either the $$ was right to stick the l bizkit name on a finished premo meth track or that meth just 'stumbled' inside the studio odb style and dropped shit, but these stupid ass theories are proved wrong by the fact that both fred and meth make premeditated mentions of sunblock!! anyway if you feel guilty listening to a blazingly hot premo track with a shit mc on it then its probably time to reevaluate your stance on gangstarr
thats right i said it!! ninety nine was such a golden twelve months for premier that in between so ghetto and the only mos def track i can still listen to he could give this delicately hardcore beat to a fucking metal band and i'd still love it. its not a hard jam to take apart, the best parts are the descending shaolin flourish and marley marl/early bad boy single random bell squelch thing, but it just has that superb eternal session feel, like a giant lineup of every rapper on the planet could lurk on it for hours and approach the shit from like nine million crazy styles. besides all that it needs to be on the list for historical importance because its 1) premo's only successful summer jam ever and 2) the first ever rap rock track to totally get rid of guitars, which was mindblowingly revolutionary and created the enviroment for the current linkin park remix cd which is the future of pop music
i wish i had more to say on the lyrics though because i cant stand fuckers who skip them to talk about the beat but both mcs are almost see-thru, i bet meth himself forgot that weak verse before he left the booth and f durst tries really hard but his rap voice is toxic like that cleaning fluid in school hallways
of course because hes white and sings in a rock band that isnt british and 'spirally' all the skinny french guys who dig hiphop bugged and said the unexpected collab was because either the $$ was right to stick the l bizkit name on a finished premo meth track or that meth just 'stumbled' inside the studio odb style and dropped shit, but these stupid ass theories are proved wrong by the fact that both fred and meth make premeditated mentions of sunblock!! anyway if you feel guilty listening to a blazingly hot premo track with a shit mc on it then its probably time to reevaluate your stance on gangstarr
swv - "right here" (1993)
when i got the shoot tha pump compilation, "right here" was a half-remembered remnant from totp; i had probably never even considered liking it or disliking it (i suspect even when i was about eleven though i must have noticed the horrible faux-pas of those jockey trousers in the video! swv's image has consistently derailed their career! and i don't just mean one of them looking like a man). anyway, shoot tha pump had this tune by dj mister cee where he opens with a snatch of live biggie repeating over and over "where brooklyn at? where brooklyn at?" and then in come the achingly pretty chords from "right here" (or the track it sampled but i've never heard that) - this is the kind of context head fuck it takes for me to realize i love a record sometimes! (i still love the mister cee song too. its true-ooh-ooh-ooh-ooh.)
when i got the shoot tha pump compilation, "right here" was a half-remembered remnant from totp; i had probably never even considered liking it or disliking it (i suspect even when i was about eleven though i must have noticed the horrible faux-pas of those jockey trousers in the video! swv's image has consistently derailed their career! and i don't just mean one of them looking like a man). anyway, shoot tha pump had this tune by dj mister cee where he opens with a snatch of live biggie repeating over and over "where brooklyn at? where brooklyn at?" and then in come the achingly pretty chords from "right here" (or the track it sampled but i've never heard that) - this is the kind of context head fuck it takes for me to realize i love a record sometimes! (i still love the mister cee song too. its true-ooh-ooh-ooh-ooh.)
prisoners of technology - "trick of technology" (1998)
there are maybe seven or eight drum'n'bass tracks i really love (all of which apparently fall outside the accepted period of mad jungle creativity!) - i'm picking this because it's the one i still want to hear now. all that's important is the bassline is really, really silly and heavy. comically mosh-heavy and doom-metal-like. and the breaks are so sharp they sound beautiful when you hear it deafeningly loud. at the time, i was hearing this and drums of death by unkle and thinking there was about to be some brilliant "credible" wave of metal-inspired dance music that could've run parallel to non-credible rap-metal, but it was never followed up (unless you count apollo 440).
there are maybe seven or eight drum'n'bass tracks i really love (all of which apparently fall outside the accepted period of mad jungle creativity!) - i'm picking this because it's the one i still want to hear now. all that's important is the bassline is really, really silly and heavy. comically mosh-heavy and doom-metal-like. and the breaks are so sharp they sound beautiful when you hear it deafeningly loud. at the time, i was hearing this and drums of death by unkle and thinking there was about to be some brilliant "credible" wave of metal-inspired dance music that could've run parallel to non-credible rap-metal, but it was never followed up (unless you count apollo 440).
27.8.02
the beatnuts f big punisher and cuban link - 'off the books' (1997)
it seems like every year i rate pun higher on my fav mc list, maybe next august i'll like him even more than biggie and charizma! his fat goodness makes this the best beatnuts single ever though they later tried to outdo it with 'watch out now' by adding like twelve more chords and the all-important middle eight that e crunk always talks about (seriously now dont get it twisted i loved 'watch out now' but it didnt bring heat like 'aiyyo its all love and loves got a thin line and puns got a big nine / respect crime but not when it reflect mine' , maybe they shouldve gotten a verse from jeru) anyway off the books is so good i even like the oft maligned goofy techno remix
it seems like every year i rate pun higher on my fav mc list, maybe next august i'll like him even more than biggie and charizma! his fat goodness makes this the best beatnuts single ever though they later tried to outdo it with 'watch out now' by adding like twelve more chords and the all-important middle eight that e crunk always talks about (seriously now dont get it twisted i loved 'watch out now' but it didnt bring heat like 'aiyyo its all love and loves got a thin line and puns got a big nine / respect crime but not when it reflect mine' , maybe they shouldve gotten a verse from jeru) anyway off the books is so good i even like the oft maligned goofy techno remix
smashmouth - 'walkin on the sun'(1996)
at first i wasnt sure if i wanted to include this because its sort of on a sixties pop tip which would make me like one of those guys who puts indie pop on best singles lists but then i remembered how thrilling and infectious the uncaptureable vocals of the fat guy in ray bans are and his fantastic pseudo brit rap style on the breakdown! luckily for smashmouth about a zillion 00s thirteen year olds are currently being exposed to this thanks to the magic of tv commercials that literally interpret 'ironic' song lyrics (see also 'lust for life' and 'bohemian like you'), which are singlehandedly saving music
at first i wasnt sure if i wanted to include this because its sort of on a sixties pop tip which would make me like one of those guys who puts indie pop on best singles lists but then i remembered how thrilling and infectious the uncaptureable vocals of the fat guy in ray bans are and his fantastic pseudo brit rap style on the breakdown! luckily for smashmouth about a zillion 00s thirteen year olds are currently being exposed to this thanks to the magic of tv commercials that literally interpret 'ironic' song lyrics (see also 'lust for life' and 'bohemian like you'), which are singlehandedly saving music
jeru the damaja - "come clean" (1994)
in the mid-nineties, when dj premier rocked the thoughtful, tastefully arranged classic-sample vibe he went to guru. when he wanted to make hardcore shit for club headz who love to shout along on the dancefloor, it was mop's turn. but when he wanted to drop his weirdest samples and his ugliest drum hits, he hooked up with proto-anti-bling moralist and owner of hiphop's greatest man-beard, jeru. yes, the no-fun stance was irritating even then, like before the commercial-underground divide properly existed! but his voice has always been so forceful that it couldn't stop him from dropping a few classics, especially this tune, where premier lays down the most suggestively dark and awkward loop he has ever dusted off.
i don't even know what instrument it is, i just know it gives the song a weird perspective-fucking cavernous feel; disorienting, but not like in an "are these my hands" way - it's something virtually intangible there in the texture of the sample and jeru's voice and the onyx grab in the chorus (the way premier scratches onyx dude's "uh oh" at the end is so brilliant!). the whole thing sounds way more dangerous and urgent than it probably should given the topic (jeru doesn't think you're real so he's gonna fuck you up! lyrically that is!) and the way jeru is really just having silly fun ("got a freaky, freaky, freaky-freaky flow/control the mic like fidel castro" etc) - the kind of shit you would rhyme over a playful beatnut beat or something, but this is tense as fuck, and maybe it's that conflict which makes it so good!
in the mid-nineties, when dj premier rocked the thoughtful, tastefully arranged classic-sample vibe he went to guru. when he wanted to make hardcore shit for club headz who love to shout along on the dancefloor, it was mop's turn. but when he wanted to drop his weirdest samples and his ugliest drum hits, he hooked up with proto-anti-bling moralist and owner of hiphop's greatest man-beard, jeru. yes, the no-fun stance was irritating even then, like before the commercial-underground divide properly existed! but his voice has always been so forceful that it couldn't stop him from dropping a few classics, especially this tune, where premier lays down the most suggestively dark and awkward loop he has ever dusted off.
i don't even know what instrument it is, i just know it gives the song a weird perspective-fucking cavernous feel; disorienting, but not like in an "are these my hands" way - it's something virtually intangible there in the texture of the sample and jeru's voice and the onyx grab in the chorus (the way premier scratches onyx dude's "uh oh" at the end is so brilliant!). the whole thing sounds way more dangerous and urgent than it probably should given the topic (jeru doesn't think you're real so he's gonna fuck you up! lyrically that is!) and the way jeru is really just having silly fun ("got a freaky, freaky, freaky-freaky flow/control the mic like fidel castro" etc) - the kind of shit you would rhyme over a playful beatnut beat or something, but this is tense as fuck, and maybe it's that conflict which makes it so good!
forty spizzest singles of the nineties
inspired by blazin squad's hot cover of "crossroads" (though of course it should have been "first of da month"!), not to mention 3sl's genuinely awesome soon-to-be-released version of "touch me tease me", it's time to look back on that shit so future boybands know what to download!
inspired by blazin squad's hot cover of "crossroads" (though of course it should have been "first of da month"!), not to mention 3sl's genuinely awesome soon-to-be-released version of "touch me tease me", it's time to look back on that shit so future boybands know what to download!
26.8.02
monica - "all eyez on me"
monica has been through some bad stuff! it's not really reflected on this track though, a very sweet michael jackson re-write where rodney 'darkwave' jerkins works the old disco beat on his super-computer so it comes out heavy p-funk style. the bassline is so nice this could have worked without trying to ape the rest of the original song, but that wouldn't be very jerkins-ish: the dude has always sounded more interested in olde-r'n'b musicality than most of the super-producers (even "what about us" has an excessive number of chords!) which leads to the totally over-the-top middle-eight on this tune. rodney brings the strings, monica brings serious lung workout (her whole vocal performance is super-energetic) - it seems to frame the song differently, cuz when i first heard it i was all about the p-funk robot-monster propulsive beat, but now i'm listening for the barely concealed and vaguely embarrassing melodrama!
monica has been through some bad stuff! it's not really reflected on this track though, a very sweet michael jackson re-write where rodney 'darkwave' jerkins works the old disco beat on his super-computer so it comes out heavy p-funk style. the bassline is so nice this could have worked without trying to ape the rest of the original song, but that wouldn't be very jerkins-ish: the dude has always sounded more interested in olde-r'n'b musicality than most of the super-producers (even "what about us" has an excessive number of chords!) which leads to the totally over-the-top middle-eight on this tune. rodney brings the strings, monica brings serious lung workout (her whole vocal performance is super-energetic) - it seems to frame the song differently, cuz when i first heard it i was all about the p-funk robot-monster propulsive beat, but now i'm listening for the barely concealed and vaguely embarrassing melodrama!
25.8.02
puffy f biggie and busta - victory (nine inch nails remix)
the original is an eternal classic, i always love laying a beat underneath a straight orchestral rip in the style usually only beanie sigel and white djs can get away with, but hearing big's last mtv video verse done over by trent reznor in the now-hot abrasive gothhop style just reminds me how fucking visionary diddy really used to be!! its on some like proto cann ox beat shit but with bks finest instead of those other dudes rhyming, maybe the best collab of the sort until the no doubt outkast remix
the original is an eternal classic, i always love laying a beat underneath a straight orchestral rip in the style usually only beanie sigel and white djs can get away with, but hearing big's last mtv video verse done over by trent reznor in the now-hot abrasive gothhop style just reminds me how fucking visionary diddy really used to be!! its on some like proto cann ox beat shit but with bks finest instead of those other dudes rhyming, maybe the best collab of the sort until the no doubt outkast remix
23.8.02
if dmx really wants to destroy ja rule he should get all these producers for his next cd:
$ rick rubin
$ trackmasters
$ easy mo bee
$ swizz on a tough reggae style
$ adam f
$ d.r. p.eriod or whatever the fuck that 'ante up' nigga calls himself
$ robert "shim"kirkland
$ inspectah deck
$ rik rok and it'd sound just like change the game but faster!!
$ kutmasta kurt
$ whichever of the neptunes was really behind 'grindin', my guess is chad
$ the guy who did this fucking smooth owner of a lonely heart midi
$ any studio cat nursing a beef with irv gotti so strong that irv promised he would never do beats on the same record with him (or alternately anyone with a time machine who can bring back1998 gotti and kill the present one to take his place hongkong style)
$ rick rubin
$ trackmasters
$ easy mo bee
$ swizz on a tough reggae style
$ adam f
$ d.r. p.eriod or whatever the fuck that 'ante up' nigga calls himself
$ robert "shim"kirkland
$ inspectah deck
$ rik rok and it'd sound just like change the game but faster!!
$ kutmasta kurt
$ whichever of the neptunes was really behind 'grindin', my guess is chad
$ the guy who did this fucking smooth owner of a lonely heart midi
$ any studio cat nursing a beef with irv gotti so strong that irv promised he would never do beats on the same record with him (or alternately anyone with a time machine who can bring back1998 gotti and kill the present one to take his place hongkong style)
22.8.02
eve/alicia keys - "gangsta lovin'"
eve knows how to open a song - the first thirty five seconds of "who's that girl" were dangerously giddy, almost too much fun to respond to on the dancefloor (unless you just shrieked and held your hands in the air); the first verse on "let me blow ya mind" was gold, same with "what ya want" from ryde or die vol 1 ("i'm ballin y'all, yes i be appallin y'all/boss type hold it down, wantin all of y'all/callin y'all never chasin me down/three weeks, heartbroken, yes you hatin me now"!).
"gangsta lovin" opens with this warm-glow "real"-r'n'b sound like the beat has been dusted off from a few years ago, before everyone started listening for the gaps. alicia is wailing, maybe to prove this is a duet instead of just a guest spot (evidence of eve/alicia power struggle: eve's verses are shorter than necessary, like she's dropping three guest spots on an alicia keys song!), and i'm expecting this to be a little pre-first-verse semi hook - but listening to the whole thing reveals that hey, this is the chorus! i don't mind that its weak though, because the sound is so pretty and expertly arranged, a deliberately synthetic warm bath which fits when eve's style is becoming even more laid-back. alicia comes with a good hook at the end too with that "it's that gangsta lovin/that's just got me buggin" part (maybe made more catchy by not using it for the first three minutes!); i know it's good now cuz i've been singing it all morning.
eve knows how to open a song - the first thirty five seconds of "who's that girl" were dangerously giddy, almost too much fun to respond to on the dancefloor (unless you just shrieked and held your hands in the air); the first verse on "let me blow ya mind" was gold, same with "what ya want" from ryde or die vol 1 ("i'm ballin y'all, yes i be appallin y'all/boss type hold it down, wantin all of y'all/callin y'all never chasin me down/three weeks, heartbroken, yes you hatin me now"!).
"gangsta lovin" opens with this warm-glow "real"-r'n'b sound like the beat has been dusted off from a few years ago, before everyone started listening for the gaps. alicia is wailing, maybe to prove this is a duet instead of just a guest spot (evidence of eve/alicia power struggle: eve's verses are shorter than necessary, like she's dropping three guest spots on an alicia keys song!), and i'm expecting this to be a little pre-first-verse semi hook - but listening to the whole thing reveals that hey, this is the chorus! i don't mind that its weak though, because the sound is so pretty and expertly arranged, a deliberately synthetic warm bath which fits when eve's style is becoming even more laid-back. alicia comes with a good hook at the end too with that "it's that gangsta lovin/that's just got me buggin" part (maybe made more catchy by not using it for the first three minutes!); i know it's good now cuz i've been singing it all morning.
aaliyah - 'i refuse'
usually whenever babygirl brings the drawn out long/short verse style it sounds like a sophisticated take on quiet kelis but for some reason this reminds me of that one brilliant song on the second funk flex mix where mary j blige freestyles over the "survival of the fittest" beat! i have a suspicion this is because the "rock the boat" guy's production is basically just "no more drama" (only without the eternal shame of tv show theme beatjacking that camron has to carry on his frightening shoulders ha ha)
usually whenever babygirl brings the drawn out long/short verse style it sounds like a sophisticated take on quiet kelis but for some reason this reminds me of that one brilliant song on the second funk flex mix where mary j blige freestyles over the "survival of the fittest" beat! i have a suspicion this is because the "rock the boat" guy's production is basically just "no more drama" (only without the eternal shame of tv show theme beatjacking that camron has to carry on his frightening shoulders ha ha)
18.8.02
romeo - "romeo dun"
look what romeo dun! more people bought this than "james dean"! as has been noted before on spizzazzz, the chorus is sub-richard blackwood and he's barely even a better mc! fuck romeo and fuck t4 for letting him come on to sell his lame product every week for seemingly the past three months.
look what romeo dun! more people bought this than "james dean"! as has been noted before on spizzazzz, the chorus is sub-richard blackwood and he's barely even a better mc! fuck romeo and fuck t4 for letting him come on to sell his lame product every week for seemingly the past three months.
daniel bedingfield - "james dean"
what the fuck is this number @#*& shit?? i hate the british public so much right now. daniel bedingfield is a strange man, but this is an incredible vocal performance! he sings like he can't get enough of himself and he can't let out all the frustrated energy bubbling under the not-very-calm-anyway surface! i want him to fucking kill it on totp just like he did with gotta get thru this.
what the fuck is this number @#*& shit?? i hate the british public so much right now. daniel bedingfield is a strange man, but this is an incredible vocal performance! he sings like he can't get enough of himself and he can't let out all the frustrated energy bubbling under the not-very-calm-anyway surface! i want him to fucking kill it on totp just like he did with gotta get thru this.
hear'say - "lovin is easy"
chic-y guitars; or at the very least beverly knight-y guitars; passable propulsive-beat action. this is a pretty high chart entry considering they have been blacklisted by the entire industry. they probably had to fight like dogs to get any kind of promotion on this! and they have to suffer the ignominy of using the liberty x sleaze-soul formula to get back some sales!
it's not very good though.
chic-y guitars; or at the very least beverly knight-y guitars; passable propulsive-beat action. this is a pretty high chart entry considering they have been blacklisted by the entire industry. they probably had to fight like dogs to get any kind of promotion on this! and they have to suffer the ignominy of using the liberty x sleaze-soul formula to get back some sales!
it's not very good though.
shakira - "underneath your clothes"
hey shakira, underneath my clothes i think you'll find my fist! she's totally been upstaged by vanessa carlton! the middle is just like the middle eight in that aerosmith song where edward furlong is a troubled teen and joe perry almost gets run over by a train during one of his overrated solos. they should have let me drive that train!
hey shakira, underneath my clothes i think you'll find my fist! she's totally been upstaged by vanessa carlton! the middle is just like the middle eight in that aerosmith song where edward furlong is a troubled teen and joe perry almost gets run over by a train during one of his overrated solos. they should have let me drive that train!
p diddy - "i need a girl"
hey puffy, perhaps you also need a punch in the face! i didn't realize until i saw him perform it on totp that the b side of this record is bizzarely the actual usher song, "you don't have to call" - couldn't that just be released separately, considering it's like twelve times as good as this song?? quite frankly though, the dude made a complete fool of himself while performing it.
hey puffy, perhaps you also need a punch in the face! i didn't realize until i saw him perform it on totp that the b side of this record is bizzarely the actual usher song, "you don't have to call" - couldn't that just be released separately, considering it's like twelve times as good as this song?? quite frankly though, the dude made a complete fool of himself while performing it.
snap and someone else - "do you see the light"
i don't remember this song but apparently it's a reworked song from vintage-era snap! motherfuckers should have brought back "rhythm is a dancer" instead. but the vocal (dunno if it's the original snap singer) just did the awesome "whoa-oh" that she does throughout "rhythm is a dancer" so i like this now!
i don't remember this song but apparently it's a reworked song from vintage-era snap! motherfuckers should have brought back "rhythm is a dancer" instead. but the vocal (dunno if it's the original snap singer) just did the awesome "whoa-oh" that she does throughout "rhythm is a dancer" so i like this now!
vanessa carlton - "a thousand miles"
soppy, twee, sugary-sweet fluff that instantly conjures cathartic "i'm a woman now" moments associated with joey from dawson's creek. and it's very good! but note video-makers that i don't need to see her playing piano constantly throught her stupid video to believe its really her playing it!
soppy, twee, sugary-sweet fluff that instantly conjures cathartic "i'm a woman now" moments associated with joey from dawson's creek. and it's very good! but note video-makers that i don't need to see her playing piano constantly throught her stupid video to believe its really her playing it!
mary j blige/ja rule - "rainy dayz"
good to hear you again, ja! the days when mary j was genuinely exciting (circa "real love") are so long ago that i don't really know what to think of her anymore. is it about time i came around again? this record doesn't make a good case - it's not even as good as "rainy dayz" by raekwon, which was the worst song on the cuban linx album! these beats are suspiciously uk-remix blacksmith-like!
good to hear you again, ja! the days when mary j was genuinely exciting (circa "real love") are so long ago that i don't really know what to think of her anymore. is it about time i came around again? this record doesn't make a good case - it's not even as good as "rainy dayz" by raekwon, which was the worst song on the cuban linx album! these beats are suspiciously uk-remix blacksmith-like!
bowling for soup - "girl all the bad guys want"
motherfuckers like this really let themselves down when they do totp and make annoying stupid faces while singing. anyway this is surely the dregs of the fast-decaying pop-punk chart explosion - everything is becoming less catchy, less thrilling, and even more mannered! (why don't i mind that sum41 dude is equally mannered and makes faces which are just as superficially stupid!?)
i may like it in a few weeks though.
motherfuckers like this really let themselves down when they do totp and make annoying stupid faces while singing. anyway this is surely the dregs of the fast-decaying pop-punk chart explosion - everything is becoming less catchy, less thrilling, and even more mannered! (why don't i mind that sum41 dude is equally mannered and makes faces which are just as superficially stupid!?)
i may like it in a few weeks though.
nelly - "hot in herre"
all the urban hitz in a row! ok yes i judged this record too early when i said it was the worst thing ever. nelly sounding like he's crying is obviously a good thing; nelly being utterly unconcerned by the signifiers that tell us this a hiphop record is a good thing (much as i love the signifiers!)(see also: "dilemma" which is seemingly even less concerned!); nelly making every line a catchy hook is a good thing.
the most unlikely grower of the year!
all the urban hitz in a row! ok yes i judged this record too early when i said it was the worst thing ever. nelly sounding like he's crying is obviously a good thing; nelly being utterly unconcerned by the signifiers that tell us this a hiphop record is a good thing (much as i love the signifiers!)(see also: "dilemma" which is seemingly even less concerned!); nelly making every line a catchy hook is a good thing.
the most unlikely grower of the year!
cam'ron - "oh boy"
down eight places, you fucks! actually, it's an incredibly tedious song, but i like it anyway: for the "ain't no stoppin us, guns we got a lot of 'em" line, for the high-pitched bits, for the lazy menace, and especially for cam'ron's strange blankness. i suppose nothing else sticks out enough to make this a classic - julez santana's parts seem to be the most absurdly censored in the history of rap, unless he's just a jerky fucker.
down eight places, you fucks! actually, it's an incredibly tedious song, but i like it anyway: for the "ain't no stoppin us, guns we got a lot of 'em" line, for the high-pitched bits, for the lazy menace, and especially for cam'ron's strange blankness. i suppose nothing else sticks out enough to make this a classic - julez santana's parts seem to be the most absurdly censored in the history of rap, unless he's just a jerky fucker.
atc - "all around the world"
lots of keyboard presets playing the same melody in case we are in any doubt as to how it goes! this is a very poor vocal performance, particularly by euro-dance standards, as they normally draft in some decent talent to be replaced on totp by a precisely 30% more attractive woman!
lots of keyboard presets playing the same melody in case we are in any doubt as to how it goes! this is a very poor vocal performance, particularly by euro-dance standards, as they normally draft in some decent talent to be replaced on totp by a precisely 30% more attractive woman!
status quo - "jam side down"
hey i saw the movie eight legged freaks today - it was very witty; struck a nice balance between horror-comedy; i think they knew not to make the shocks too shocking cuz then it would lose all balance.
what the hell, maybe its records like this that make the uk charts really interesting! don't make me talk about it though. i'm losing the will to carry on.
hey i saw the movie eight legged freaks today - it was very witty; struck a nice balance between horror-comedy; i think they knew not to make the shocks too shocking cuz then it would lose all balance.
what the hell, maybe its records like this that make the uk charts really interesting! don't make me talk about it though. i'm losing the will to carry on.
elvis - "a little less conversation"
any other context than "wooooo elvis" (plus woooo ad campaign), this would be banished to the breezeblock and forgotten about within weeks. you can hardly even hear the dead dude anyway! apparently it was done in like fifteen minutes - well i never, who would have thought you could just slap on some big beat insta-breaks on cubase and make a hit!
any other context than "wooooo elvis" (plus woooo ad campaign), this would be banished to the breezeblock and forgotten about within weeks. you can hardly even hear the dead dude anyway! apparently it was done in like fifteen minutes - well i never, who would have thought you could just slap on some big beat insta-breaks on cubase and make a hit!
b2k - "uh huh"
this is the first time i've heard this properly - i saw the video though; their dancing is like three times more energetic than the beat is! it is passable though. the creepin' b-line is cool. nep-style drum hits are even more tired when they're not used by the neps themselves. too many people are adopting the precise swing on their drum machine breaks.
this is the first time i've heard this properly - i saw the video though; their dancing is like three times more energetic than the beat is! it is passable though. the creepin' b-line is cool. nep-style drum hits are even more tired when they're not used by the neps themselves. too many people are adopting the precise swing on their drum machine breaks.
red hot chili peppers - "by the way"
i still like this! it's a juggernaut of an emotional alt-rock record, it has nice harmonies, it has anthony kiedis' voice which i have a soft spot for, possibly related to youthful exposure to chili peppers cover of "if you want me to stay". give it a chance please!
i still like this! it's a juggernaut of an emotional alt-rock record, it has nice harmonies, it has anthony kiedis' voice which i have a soft spot for, possibly related to youthful exposure to chili peppers cover of "if you want me to stay". give it a chance please!
amillionsons - "misti blu"
wow, records like this normally remain ghettoized on planet giles peterson. i suppose i can understand why it's kind of broken through (number 39 is hardly even mainstream anymore though!) - it's a good pastiche sweet soul record that feels vaguely embarrassiing in an important way. technically the aching "whoa-oh-oh"s of the vocalist are very good. meh!
16.8.02
a skim through this mediocre guardian article and a quick poll amongst spizzazzz contributors (well, two of them) suggests spizzazzz is 70% in favour of this alleged nu drivetime phenomenon currently sweeping the nation's cars. i bet these songs do sound even better at 8 in the morning on fucking virgin radio (which is a point not touched on in this article - songs tailor-made to sound good on am radio) in a traffic jam as well, but i don't even know a single motherfucker who drives!
(the thing last week about music played in shops was really good though, and it reminded me how i once heard tlc's "unpretty" in a clothes shop, which magnified the terribly depressing body-image issues of the song and made me all upset! thanks a lot, tk maxx! [again])
(the thing last week about music played in shops was really good though, and it reminded me how i once heard tlc's "unpretty" in a clothes shop, which magnified the terribly depressing body-image issues of the song and made me all upset! thanks a lot, tk maxx! [again])
12.8.02
truth hurts - "addictive"
am i the only person to remember the bizzare mid-to-late nineties radio practice of editing rap songs to the point where there was hardly any rhyming on them - i'm thinking particularly of jay z's "ain't no nigga" (two big chunks taken out of the first verse with shoddy fucking editing so the whole thing makes zero sense! it goes into the chorus like "no question i got more black chicks--ahhh!"), pras's "ghetto superstar" and "rumble in the jungle" by the fugees. it was presumptious and strange to think a radio audience didn't want to hear an mc drop a whole verse, and probably added to how annoying "ghetto superstar" became since it was almost one long half-arsed chorus.
i suspect this was imparted to radio stations by their listeners, as now we even have the straight version of "oh boy" on daytime radio, and even on r'n'b songs the guest verses (which are sparingly used these days) are longer anyway - like rakim's verse on "addictive", which is not only very, very tight (bodes well for his dre-produced [!!!] album if it ever comes out), it actually makes sense; he's given just enough time to produce something meaty and well-rounded to contribute to the song.
anyway yeah i just heard "addictive" on the radio for the third time today and it's still astonishingly good.
am i the only person to remember the bizzare mid-to-late nineties radio practice of editing rap songs to the point where there was hardly any rhyming on them - i'm thinking particularly of jay z's "ain't no nigga" (two big chunks taken out of the first verse with shoddy fucking editing so the whole thing makes zero sense! it goes into the chorus like "no question i got more black chicks--ahhh!"), pras's "ghetto superstar" and "rumble in the jungle" by the fugees. it was presumptious and strange to think a radio audience didn't want to hear an mc drop a whole verse, and probably added to how annoying "ghetto superstar" became since it was almost one long half-arsed chorus.
i suspect this was imparted to radio stations by their listeners, as now we even have the straight version of "oh boy" on daytime radio, and even on r'n'b songs the guest verses (which are sparingly used these days) are longer anyway - like rakim's verse on "addictive", which is not only very, very tight (bodes well for his dre-produced [!!!] album if it ever comes out), it actually makes sense; he's given just enough time to produce something meaty and well-rounded to contribute to the song.
anyway yeah i just heard "addictive" on the radio for the third time today and it's still astonishingly good.
10.8.02
incomplete history of rap/rock collaboration fun
public enemy + anthrax – “bring the noise”
a long time ago aerosmith and run dmc worked together on a record called "walk this way", and it fucking sucked. it was meant to prove the worlds of rock and rap could combine to create something double-good! but instead anyone with any taste waited until pe and anthrax worked together on their awesome bludgeoning metal version of “bring the noise” to believe this marriage could work. chuck d generously (inexplicably) handed over the second and third verses to anthrax dude who spat it word for word. he sounds pretty good too! "walk this way" is tame and lumbering in comparison - why would run dmc want to rhyme like steven tyler anyway?? you can bet on which of these songs the weirdo from korn was taking notes.
various - judgement night s/t
obviously emilio estevez was paying attention too: just a few years later he personally invented nu metal by forcing lots of ill-matched rappers and rock bands into a cramped studio. together they created a suitably "hard-edged" soundtrack for his flop film judgement night. (if you imagine the soundtrack is telling the story of the film then emilio and his buddies are mudhoney being hounded through decaying urban city-scapes by sir mix-a-lot.)
it actually worked out very well on most of the tracks, particularly cypress hill vs sonic youth ("cypress hill are men, men who get mad baked. so baked they don't even notice when sonic youth put mad art-feedback on the start of their songs" is how jack cable explained the genius of this song) and boo yaa tribe vs faith no more ("chris patton, former lieutenant governer of hong kong and faith no more lead voxacalist, is a man, a white man. boo yaa tribe are big fat men, from samoa. when they're not playing 7-a-side rugby they like to rap, about life in the ghetto and about bustin', bustin' mad gats, mad gats of ghetto justice.......rap justice." ?!). only downer is everlast from house of pain, who gives an early indication that it's not just hiphop he has trouble performing.
blackstreet ft slash + odb - "fix"
collaborations arent required much these days now that we have a super-breed of bands like linkin park to live out these dream match-ups on every song. but still there are oddities like this underrated song from the blackstreet golden age. it's sort of awkward but who wouldn't want to hear slash's guitar bleeding along with teddy riley's crazy mouth-keyboard thing in the same song, at the same time? there's also that loud rocks album but its rubbish.
swizz beats ft. ja rule + metallica - "we did it again"
and that brings it to right now: what the hell is swizz actually doing on this record? i think if anyone actually told me i'd regret asking. i can't believe he could do such an incredible stab at post-blueprint kind of stately soul production on "good times" by styles p (what really makes it special is he takes that style and then sends it into fucking outer space!! with buzzing keyboards and fx washes) but make ja rule and metallica sound so silly and weak on this. a shame because in a lot of ways its getting back to what made judgement night good: ja rule actually tries to fit in instead of pretending like he's rhyming over a rockwilder beat. metallica actually include more than one riff, even if none of them are very good. what a waste when swizz could literally have saved music!
public enemy + anthrax – “bring the noise”
a long time ago aerosmith and run dmc worked together on a record called "walk this way", and it fucking sucked. it was meant to prove the worlds of rock and rap could combine to create something double-good! but instead anyone with any taste waited until pe and anthrax worked together on their awesome bludgeoning metal version of “bring the noise” to believe this marriage could work. chuck d generously (inexplicably) handed over the second and third verses to anthrax dude who spat it word for word. he sounds pretty good too! "walk this way" is tame and lumbering in comparison - why would run dmc want to rhyme like steven tyler anyway?? you can bet on which of these songs the weirdo from korn was taking notes.
various - judgement night s/t
obviously emilio estevez was paying attention too: just a few years later he personally invented nu metal by forcing lots of ill-matched rappers and rock bands into a cramped studio. together they created a suitably "hard-edged" soundtrack for his flop film judgement night. (if you imagine the soundtrack is telling the story of the film then emilio and his buddies are mudhoney being hounded through decaying urban city-scapes by sir mix-a-lot.)
it actually worked out very well on most of the tracks, particularly cypress hill vs sonic youth ("cypress hill are men, men who get mad baked. so baked they don't even notice when sonic youth put mad art-feedback on the start of their songs" is how jack cable explained the genius of this song) and boo yaa tribe vs faith no more ("chris patton, former lieutenant governer of hong kong and faith no more lead voxacalist, is a man, a white man. boo yaa tribe are big fat men, from samoa. when they're not playing 7-a-side rugby they like to rap, about life in the ghetto and about bustin', bustin' mad gats, mad gats of ghetto justice.......rap justice." ?!). only downer is everlast from house of pain, who gives an early indication that it's not just hiphop he has trouble performing.
blackstreet ft slash + odb - "fix"
collaborations arent required much these days now that we have a super-breed of bands like linkin park to live out these dream match-ups on every song. but still there are oddities like this underrated song from the blackstreet golden age. it's sort of awkward but who wouldn't want to hear slash's guitar bleeding along with teddy riley's crazy mouth-keyboard thing in the same song, at the same time? there's also that loud rocks album but its rubbish.
swizz beats ft. ja rule + metallica - "we did it again"
and that brings it to right now: what the hell is swizz actually doing on this record? i think if anyone actually told me i'd regret asking. i can't believe he could do such an incredible stab at post-blueprint kind of stately soul production on "good times" by styles p (what really makes it special is he takes that style and then sends it into fucking outer space!! with buzzing keyboards and fx washes) but make ja rule and metallica sound so silly and weak on this. a shame because in a lot of ways its getting back to what made judgement night good: ja rule actually tries to fit in instead of pretending like he's rhyming over a rockwilder beat. metallica actually include more than one riff, even if none of them are very good. what a waste when swizz could literally have saved music!
9.8.02
irv gotti weighs in on the dmx/ja rule controversy
and what does he have to say? dmx has been shit since he stopped working with irv gotti! and the great depression is the worst album in hiphop history! (i dunno, i didn't bother to hear it after "who we be" was on the radio quite a lot: it always felt like it was going on for eight minutes instead of three, even though the horns were quite good... maybe dmx was too hung up on not being like ja rule - a shame because mary j would kill that chorus.) this news also reminded me to have a listen to irv's inc project, and i can reveal his beats are getting worse with every new record!
and what does he have to say? dmx has been shit since he stopped working with irv gotti! and the great depression is the worst album in hiphop history! (i dunno, i didn't bother to hear it after "who we be" was on the radio quite a lot: it always felt like it was going on for eight minutes instead of three, even though the horns were quite good... maybe dmx was too hung up on not being like ja rule - a shame because mary j would kill that chorus.) this news also reminded me to have a listen to irv's inc project, and i can reveal his beats are getting worse with every new record!
7.8.02
obie trice - "rap name"
you may have heard the first line of this one already - "obie trice, real name, no gimmicks" - and immediately it's very, very exciting to hear what actually folllows from that little clip that's probably still playing on a radio nearby right this second. its em's production, which means a) its stuffed with little keyboard/sampler tinkerings that make little difference to how your body or mind responds to the beat, and b) it has that really bad hi hat sound he used on too much of the eminem show! still, the main hook is good, maybe because it's already so familiar, and obie is at least better than any of d12. he already sounds like he's trying to put across his rhymes to a global audience instead of just headz or his friends - maybe some mcs automatically do this from day one. (or perhaps it's because he has the biggest pop star in the world singing the chorus.)
i'm not always sure its a good thing, particularly if the audience doesn't turn out as large after all, or if there's a sense of pandering to taste - for some reason i almost wish a lot of the time that producers would make music with popular trends in mind (you know, like umm "dirty pop"), but with mcs it can lead to a smaller-every-day bag of references and phrases and delivery styles that get tired a lot quicker, with no sense of the individual history thing which can increase interest so much and actually make you want to follow what the mc will put out next.
you may have heard the first line of this one already - "obie trice, real name, no gimmicks" - and immediately it's very, very exciting to hear what actually folllows from that little clip that's probably still playing on a radio nearby right this second. its em's production, which means a) its stuffed with little keyboard/sampler tinkerings that make little difference to how your body or mind responds to the beat, and b) it has that really bad hi hat sound he used on too much of the eminem show! still, the main hook is good, maybe because it's already so familiar, and obie is at least better than any of d12. he already sounds like he's trying to put across his rhymes to a global audience instead of just headz or his friends - maybe some mcs automatically do this from day one. (or perhaps it's because he has the biggest pop star in the world singing the chorus.)
i'm not always sure its a good thing, particularly if the audience doesn't turn out as large after all, or if there's a sense of pandering to taste - for some reason i almost wish a lot of the time that producers would make music with popular trends in mind (you know, like umm "dirty pop"), but with mcs it can lead to a smaller-every-day bag of references and phrases and delivery styles that get tired a lot quicker, with no sense of the individual history thing which can increase interest so much and actually make you want to follow what the mc will put out next.
5.8.02
darius #1!
i was going to say darius' song was the best thing to come from the whole popidolstars industry, but then i remembered slinkiest-song-of-2001 "thinking it over" by liberty x, which is a million times better but only got to about number ten. its hard to be reasonable about popidolstars when you can see it monopolizing the number one for an infinite length of time, and when most of the time the records are so worthless it leaves a void where all the fun chart discussion should be. it makes it a lot tougher to like any record that is associated with this evil - but really "colourblind" is ok, deserved of the top 30, pushed to number one by people eager to complete that romantic-narrative happy ending obligation thing (or the same as how you'd buy your significant other/friend/relative's single if it was in woolworths? ok yes, that's quite condescending). i've probably gone on about it before.
diddy p's "i need a girl" tries to do plaintative and direct heartbroken-thug like ll cool j does it but it ends up sounding creepy. the most interesting thing about diddy p records is what kind of cadence he's going to try to deflect the hatas - obviously insecure about his rhyming ability (with good reason sometimes), he seems to have opted to change his voice and occasionally his whole flow on every album - on this he's drawling slightly, which only adds to the impression given by the lyrics that he is speaking down the phone to j-lo while masturbating. it's a shame because i thought his original style was effective (especially on "benjamins" - surely testament to the power of hiphop that puffy and the lox - who are technically some of the worst rappers to blow up in the past ten years - could make one of my favourite songs).
i think i prefer bad boy productions from 97 as well: the dudes used to to have an uncanny ability to pick perfect samples whether they were well known or obscure, and expertly beef them up to fill dancefloors (the way they made old sounds so pristine and all-encompassing is as good as anything anyone has done with a sampler), but eventually people were like, "that shit is too easy" (coinciding with puffy's shitty second album and the rise of keyboards in rap), so puffy had to go as far as changing his name to re-establish some credibility. this has led to the use of outside producers, most of them unsuitable for his ever-changing-but-always-dumb flow. i hope whoever did the production on "i need a girl" also did "rock the boat" by aaliyah, because they're very similar. usher's chorus is quite nice.
"black suits comin' (nod ya head)" is embarrassing on the first ten or twelve listens... ok, it will always be embarrassing. "angry" will smith is the worst idea since ashley started singing in the record shop and will was like, "hey ashley you should start a popular singing career and i'll be your manager!". great days. what the hell happened to tattiana ali? i still like "black suits comin'" because most songs that have hard rock guitars and rapping on them are good, and cringing embarrassment is as likely to keep me listening as anything else.
"boys" is good too: that plinky-plonky melody is irresistable, as is britney's slowly-disappearing-from-her-own-records trick. how long can it be before she's releasing funk instrumentals with a solitary filtered grunt in the fade-out to keep fans happy?
i was going to say darius' song was the best thing to come from the whole popidolstars industry, but then i remembered slinkiest-song-of-2001 "thinking it over" by liberty x, which is a million times better but only got to about number ten. its hard to be reasonable about popidolstars when you can see it monopolizing the number one for an infinite length of time, and when most of the time the records are so worthless it leaves a void where all the fun chart discussion should be. it makes it a lot tougher to like any record that is associated with this evil - but really "colourblind" is ok, deserved of the top 30, pushed to number one by people eager to complete that romantic-narrative happy ending obligation thing (or the same as how you'd buy your significant other/friend/relative's single if it was in woolworths? ok yes, that's quite condescending). i've probably gone on about it before.
diddy p's "i need a girl" tries to do plaintative and direct heartbroken-thug like ll cool j does it but it ends up sounding creepy. the most interesting thing about diddy p records is what kind of cadence he's going to try to deflect the hatas - obviously insecure about his rhyming ability (with good reason sometimes), he seems to have opted to change his voice and occasionally his whole flow on every album - on this he's drawling slightly, which only adds to the impression given by the lyrics that he is speaking down the phone to j-lo while masturbating. it's a shame because i thought his original style was effective (especially on "benjamins" - surely testament to the power of hiphop that puffy and the lox - who are technically some of the worst rappers to blow up in the past ten years - could make one of my favourite songs).
i think i prefer bad boy productions from 97 as well: the dudes used to to have an uncanny ability to pick perfect samples whether they were well known or obscure, and expertly beef them up to fill dancefloors (the way they made old sounds so pristine and all-encompassing is as good as anything anyone has done with a sampler), but eventually people were like, "that shit is too easy" (coinciding with puffy's shitty second album and the rise of keyboards in rap), so puffy had to go as far as changing his name to re-establish some credibility. this has led to the use of outside producers, most of them unsuitable for his ever-changing-but-always-dumb flow. i hope whoever did the production on "i need a girl" also did "rock the boat" by aaliyah, because they're very similar. usher's chorus is quite nice.
"black suits comin' (nod ya head)" is embarrassing on the first ten or twelve listens... ok, it will always be embarrassing. "angry" will smith is the worst idea since ashley started singing in the record shop and will was like, "hey ashley you should start a popular singing career and i'll be your manager!". great days. what the hell happened to tattiana ali? i still like "black suits comin'" because most songs that have hard rock guitars and rapping on them are good, and cringing embarrassment is as likely to keep me listening as anything else.
"boys" is good too: that plinky-plonky melody is irresistable, as is britney's slowly-disappearing-from-her-own-records trick. how long can it be before she's releasing funk instrumentals with a solitary filtered grunt in the fade-out to keep fans happy?
sugababes - "round, round"
the kind of beat that sucks up everything in its path and makes it all xxxtra-dull. i'm thinking this is meant to be sugababes' sultry/sulky take on the "get the party started" vibe, but no matter how many little permutations and glitchy flourishes are added, it comes out kind of soggy and sluggish, even the torch-song middle eight diversion! (i'm picking up a hint of desperation as well, which makes me less likely to be charitable). maybe it's this set of textures - i find it tiring because no hook can really break out and hit hard and actually compel me to listen to the whole thing again.
it's quite possible the chorus is fine, but fucking hell, what sort of arrangement is this? regardless of genre-specific production, they need to listen to sticky or someone expertly arrange loads of weirdo sounds into four minutes of dancefloor gold. i'm particularly incensed by the unnecessarily real-sounding guitar - they're only using it for some pointless mid-range fill, it might as well be a really cool electroclash synth noise! in fact it would have been a good idea if sugababes had done something sounding exactly like that "missy queen's gonna die" song.
the kind of beat that sucks up everything in its path and makes it all xxxtra-dull. i'm thinking this is meant to be sugababes' sultry/sulky take on the "get the party started" vibe, but no matter how many little permutations and glitchy flourishes are added, it comes out kind of soggy and sluggish, even the torch-song middle eight diversion! (i'm picking up a hint of desperation as well, which makes me less likely to be charitable). maybe it's this set of textures - i find it tiring because no hook can really break out and hit hard and actually compel me to listen to the whole thing again.
it's quite possible the chorus is fine, but fucking hell, what sort of arrangement is this? regardless of genre-specific production, they need to listen to sticky or someone expertly arrange loads of weirdo sounds into four minutes of dancefloor gold. i'm particularly incensed by the unnecessarily real-sounding guitar - they're only using it for some pointless mid-range fill, it might as well be a really cool electroclash synth noise! in fact it would have been a good idea if sugababes had done something sounding exactly like that "missy queen's gonna die" song.
2.8.02
darius - "colourblind"
hey, darius wrote this! and i am honestly glad he did because it reveals an endearing belief in proper pop - proper in this case meaning a halfway point between pwl 80s gloss and... uncle kracker. chorus must be exactly one third more tuneful than the verse; transition between verse and chorus must be so smooth that it will eventually sound forced; middle-eight must perfectly set up double-powered, cathartic final chorus with a couple more layers of vocal. it works out quite well, even though darius is clearly fighting himself to sound less like an unfashionable white-soul hack (this will probably be number one on sunday - could it be people have missed this kind of schmaltzy voice??).
hey, darius wrote this! and i am honestly glad he did because it reveals an endearing belief in proper pop - proper in this case meaning a halfway point between pwl 80s gloss and... uncle kracker. chorus must be exactly one third more tuneful than the verse; transition between verse and chorus must be so smooth that it will eventually sound forced; middle-eight must perfectly set up double-powered, cathartic final chorus with a couple more layers of vocal. it works out quite well, even though darius is clearly fighting himself to sound less like an unfashionable white-soul hack (this will probably be number one on sunday - could it be people have missed this kind of schmaltzy voice??).
i told you ja rule was ripping dmx! since nas vs. jay z proved that rappers could say outrageously horrible things about each other but not get shot, the floodgates have opened - every petty-ass falling out is portrayed like it could be the end of rap. thus dmx wakes up one morning and realizes cats have bitten his sometimes-brilliant style (even though any head knows dmx stole it from k solo!). the only person who considers this news is dmx himself, the poor tyke, but perhaps the main reason for his forthcoming ja rule dis is this bizzare pride and prejudice-like misunderstanding:
"we in the club in l.a. one night, he got his people, i got my people, we at two different sides of the club. me, out of respect — that's my n---a — i take two people with me to get through the crowd. i take a bottle of liquor over there, have a couple of drinks with my n---a, 'cause that's how i am. two weeks later we happened to be in the same club. same circumstances. some kid walks over to me and says, 'ja says he's over there.' i'm like, 'alright, is he gonna come over?' 'nah, he said come over there.' get the f--- out of here, man. i already extended my hand once. give me the same courtesy. you can't do the same as me? i sent him right back over there. you think [ja] would come over there after all of that. nothin'! i'm like, 'f--- you!' "
....
"we in the club in l.a. one night, he got his people, i got my people, we at two different sides of the club. me, out of respect — that's my n---a — i take two people with me to get through the crowd. i take a bottle of liquor over there, have a couple of drinks with my n---a, 'cause that's how i am. two weeks later we happened to be in the same club. same circumstances. some kid walks over to me and says, 'ja says he's over there.' i'm like, 'alright, is he gonna come over?' 'nah, he said come over there.' get the f--- out of here, man. i already extended my hand once. give me the same courtesy. you can't do the same as me? i sent him right back over there. you think [ja] would come over there after all of that. nothin'! i'm like, 'f--- you!' "
....
31.7.02
"oh boy" is tearing up daytime radio! look for it to enter the chart at about number 19. but the video has kind of ruined it - cam'ron has the world's blankest face (unless that is embarrassment). he might be one of those rappers who thinks of performing as "gay", i'm not sure because this video is all i have to go on. i really want to see the videos for what remain his best songs: "magnum" (where the beat rips the magnum p.i. theme tune without it seeming lame at all, probably because it is such a convincing club anthem) and "horse and carriage" (with mase! [oh mase, if you happen to be googling your name in a moment of boredom between sermons: the rap world demands your return to the game; ja rule can never replace you with his composite-of-dmx-and-ll cool j rhyme style; embrace the devil!])
30.7.02
shakira - "underneath your clothes"
am i the only person to wonder why shakira-as-pop-phenomenon is so strangely uninspiring? she is columbian! she has weird lyrics! she uses panpipes! she apparently can do several genres competently! she spazzes out when she performs! she has a few "cultural commentators" trying to re-contextualize her as more than just a pop star (this one is very important!) - but none of it has added up to much. so far she's put out one half-decent conquer-world-markets global pop anthem (the weakest attempt at this for ages, and i think only mega-successful because of the current lack of competition) and now this vintage-alanis ballad, where she distinguishes herself by singing like she's choking on something.
it could be a lot worse, but why am i so bored of seeing her on tv already? it wasn't like this with ricky and he only ever had to release one really good single! it wasn't like this with britney or christina. i think i'm even more interested in what enrique might release next! i'm putting it down to annoying marketing: the spin has been all about seeing shakira as a genuinely charismatic antidote to the pop puppets (where is this charisma on her bleedin' records or in her videos?), but this comes off as an uninteresting narrative to accompany media saturation - britney has confrontational videos and an endlessly contradictory public persona! christina has the same plus really horrible clothes! ricky has special padding on his arse for it to look extra-buff! shakira has "charisma"!
this is not good enough.
am i the only person to wonder why shakira-as-pop-phenomenon is so strangely uninspiring? she is columbian! she has weird lyrics! she uses panpipes! she apparently can do several genres competently! she spazzes out when she performs! she has a few "cultural commentators" trying to re-contextualize her as more than just a pop star (this one is very important!) - but none of it has added up to much. so far she's put out one half-decent conquer-world-markets global pop anthem (the weakest attempt at this for ages, and i think only mega-successful because of the current lack of competition) and now this vintage-alanis ballad, where she distinguishes herself by singing like she's choking on something.
it could be a lot worse, but why am i so bored of seeing her on tv already? it wasn't like this with ricky and he only ever had to release one really good single! it wasn't like this with britney or christina. i think i'm even more interested in what enrique might release next! i'm putting it down to annoying marketing: the spin has been all about seeing shakira as a genuinely charismatic antidote to the pop puppets (where is this charisma on her bleedin' records or in her videos?), but this comes off as an uninteresting narrative to accompany media saturation - britney has confrontational videos and an endlessly contradictory public persona! christina has the same plus really horrible clothes! ricky has special padding on his arse for it to look extra-buff! shakira has "charisma"!
this is not good enough.
26.7.02
clipse - "grindin'" remixes
from trickology: "the neptunes have officially lost their minds with this track. the beat has to be one of the worst things i've ever heard, let alone this is supposed to be a single for the radios. i guess you can't be hot forever."
i don't understand this criticism at all but at least it made me want to hear the song!
so ludacris dropped "southern hospitality" in 2000, and almost immediately it was co-opted by dancehall as a choice beat to toast over - it had the kind of blunt-instrument, almost atonal feel that a lot of dancehall producers use, creating its hooks from exaggeratedly jagged fx, something that opens up a world of choice for the vocalist: any weird melodic (or not) rhyme pattern can work, any semblance of a hook will stand out and become addictive. "grindin" takes it another step further, just a drum beat and a violent midi-gunshot effect, sounding even more riddim-like. it can be menacing or almost comical depending on who's rhyming over it, so its cool to hear the two remixes doing the rounds just to listen to a bunch of mcs have fun attacking this beat.
first mix: nore does his apropos-of-nothing thing; pusha t claims to be able to cook flapjack in 3 minutes; baby and lil wayne get all sing-song; kind of the "old-school posse cut" version. "reggae mix": some dancehall-minded mcs (i can only identify kardinal offishall, whose verse is awesome) make weird noises; the "summer holiday" version. both mixes must be heard! (original mix is kind of boring in comparison as it only has clipse - they're okay but they sound lonely.)
from trickology: "the neptunes have officially lost their minds with this track. the beat has to be one of the worst things i've ever heard, let alone this is supposed to be a single for the radios. i guess you can't be hot forever."
i don't understand this criticism at all but at least it made me want to hear the song!
so ludacris dropped "southern hospitality" in 2000, and almost immediately it was co-opted by dancehall as a choice beat to toast over - it had the kind of blunt-instrument, almost atonal feel that a lot of dancehall producers use, creating its hooks from exaggeratedly jagged fx, something that opens up a world of choice for the vocalist: any weird melodic (or not) rhyme pattern can work, any semblance of a hook will stand out and become addictive. "grindin" takes it another step further, just a drum beat and a violent midi-gunshot effect, sounding even more riddim-like. it can be menacing or almost comical depending on who's rhyming over it, so its cool to hear the two remixes doing the rounds just to listen to a bunch of mcs have fun attacking this beat.
first mix: nore does his apropos-of-nothing thing; pusha t claims to be able to cook flapjack in 3 minutes; baby and lil wayne get all sing-song; kind of the "old-school posse cut" version. "reggae mix": some dancehall-minded mcs (i can only identify kardinal offishall, whose verse is awesome) make weird noises; the "summer holiday" version. both mixes must be heard! (original mix is kind of boring in comparison as it only has clipse - they're okay but they sound lonely.)
25.7.02
some stuff i saw and/or heard this week:
rell featuring jay-z - "it's obvious"
timbaland beats don't always make themselves clear until the extended fade-outs where he brings out the little flourishes you've been (almost subliminally) hearing behind the vocal. rell is an usher clone. i haven't seen him yet, but i want him to be fat or something so if he comes on mtv we can say "its the fat usher!"
system of a down - "aerials" video
added to the list of songs that sound better coming out of a tv - it all suddenly made sense! and it struck me that s.o.a.d. are in an enviable position: they could get away with pretty much any wacky sound and still sell a few million as long as there is the anchor of an absurd, operatic vocal. (they are the new queen?!) the video possibly taps into cronenbergian body horror shit (as does the new korn vid) but i wasn't really paying enough attention to it (i was busy listening!).
ms dynamite - "dy-na-mi-tee"
self-consciously summery bit of fluff. i don't even know why this (and other similar confections like "turn off the light" by furtado and that "white boy with a feather" thing from last summer) annoy me so. i meant to get the dynamite track off the ed case album but the title eludes me - for the love of god, can someone tell me??
linkin park - "points of authority" (remix)
a modern technology blitz on your senses - so overcooked and triple-processed and so great! the remix makes the whole idea behind linkin park explicit: completely ego-free worship of impact. seriously, did you ever hear one instrument (including voice) impose itself above and beyond the feel you get from their songs? it's all there to service a single goal, a super-gratifying and hollow techno-rock rush effect they probably heard in a korn middle-eight once, which they now recreate in genius pop song form. its absolutely terrifying!
heather b - "steady rockin"
"i'ma tell how you livin', how your style be different/you be careful what you ask for cuz you just might get it" surely this is how good ms dynamite could sound if she employed the real dj premier instead of some lamer british primo wannabes!
rell featuring jay-z - "it's obvious"
timbaland beats don't always make themselves clear until the extended fade-outs where he brings out the little flourishes you've been (almost subliminally) hearing behind the vocal. rell is an usher clone. i haven't seen him yet, but i want him to be fat or something so if he comes on mtv we can say "its the fat usher!"
system of a down - "aerials" video
added to the list of songs that sound better coming out of a tv - it all suddenly made sense! and it struck me that s.o.a.d. are in an enviable position: they could get away with pretty much any wacky sound and still sell a few million as long as there is the anchor of an absurd, operatic vocal. (they are the new queen?!) the video possibly taps into cronenbergian body horror shit (as does the new korn vid) but i wasn't really paying enough attention to it (i was busy listening!).
ms dynamite - "dy-na-mi-tee"
self-consciously summery bit of fluff. i don't even know why this (and other similar confections like "turn off the light" by furtado and that "white boy with a feather" thing from last summer) annoy me so. i meant to get the dynamite track off the ed case album but the title eludes me - for the love of god, can someone tell me??
linkin park - "points of authority" (remix)
a modern technology blitz on your senses - so overcooked and triple-processed and so great! the remix makes the whole idea behind linkin park explicit: completely ego-free worship of impact. seriously, did you ever hear one instrument (including voice) impose itself above and beyond the feel you get from their songs? it's all there to service a single goal, a super-gratifying and hollow techno-rock rush effect they probably heard in a korn middle-eight once, which they now recreate in genius pop song form. its absolutely terrifying!
heather b - "steady rockin"
"i'ma tell how you livin', how your style be different/you be careful what you ask for cuz you just might get it" surely this is how good ms dynamite could sound if she employed the real dj premier instead of some lamer british primo wannabes!
23.7.02
i can recall only two of this week's new entries in the top 40. perhaps i'm not keeping up or perhaps "shooting star" by flip and fill (in at number three?!) has been made up by bored radio one website employees; or even some crazy musician hackers putting their best mp3.com tune in the official sales chart! you guys! elton john at number four: i assume this is a commercial radio thing. my dislike for commercial radio is probably mostly irrational; i'm sure they play some if not all of the good tunes radio one plays, but i like radio one's semi-myth of playing the freshest, newest, most upfront tunes - the idea that if i turn it on i will be hearing something essential, something that i must hear and have an opinion on. this is bollocks really, but its fun to buy into anyway.
i love following the weird inconstencies of the playlist and trying to work out the angle they're pushing ("mop have a top five hit, middleground hiphop is obviously under-represented! we must have the beatnuts and dilated peoples on daytime radio!") - the second-guessing game they're playing with the nation's youth. this is something that doesn't really happen with commercial radio. it may be that, say, southern fm (or even radio two)'s playlist is closer to what people actually want to hear at any given time, but where's the fun in that? radio one tries (and of course fails) to represent every real or imagined music-centered youth sub-culture in the country whether the people who make up these sub-cultures are listening or not - a bizzare thing to even attempt, which is what leads it to being so riddled with conflict and contradiction. it is also the thing that makes it so fascinating for anyone with tolerant ears and an interest in what everyone else is listening to. shame about the djs though.
anyway, the two tunes i actually do recall: "work it out" still doesn't hit with any particular force, an unnecessary excercise in retro funk minus any squelch or sweat or depth of sound. its not an unpleasant listen, beyonce's voice is fun, but remember the big single off the last austin powers soundtrack was "beautiful stranger" ("work it out" obviously would have been better if was produced by william orbit). "aerials" is way too sane in comparison to other system of a down singles; it has what might be armenian strings; it has a pretty good doom-riff; it ultimately sounds too much like an album track instead of something special, but the bearded singer really knows how to make nu metal-style constipated emoting sound fun!
i love following the weird inconstencies of the playlist and trying to work out the angle they're pushing ("mop have a top five hit, middleground hiphop is obviously under-represented! we must have the beatnuts and dilated peoples on daytime radio!") - the second-guessing game they're playing with the nation's youth. this is something that doesn't really happen with commercial radio. it may be that, say, southern fm (or even radio two)'s playlist is closer to what people actually want to hear at any given time, but where's the fun in that? radio one tries (and of course fails) to represent every real or imagined music-centered youth sub-culture in the country whether the people who make up these sub-cultures are listening or not - a bizzare thing to even attempt, which is what leads it to being so riddled with conflict and contradiction. it is also the thing that makes it so fascinating for anyone with tolerant ears and an interest in what everyone else is listening to. shame about the djs though.
anyway, the two tunes i actually do recall: "work it out" still doesn't hit with any particular force, an unnecessary excercise in retro funk minus any squelch or sweat or depth of sound. its not an unpleasant listen, beyonce's voice is fun, but remember the big single off the last austin powers soundtrack was "beautiful stranger" ("work it out" obviously would have been better if was produced by william orbit). "aerials" is way too sane in comparison to other system of a down singles; it has what might be armenian strings; it has a pretty good doom-riff; it ultimately sounds too much like an album track instead of something special, but the bearded singer really knows how to make nu metal-style constipated emoting sound fun!
18.7.02
master p + cam'ron - "bout it, bout it pt 3"
i feel like i've been preconditioned to find everything master p and his fellow no limit soldiers put out to be essentially worthless; he is certainly recognized as a rap-mogul phenomenon and an interesting character, but its almost like his music exists only so people can feel ok listening to cash money records - "i'm alright listening to this objectionable music because i know there's someone out there making it even dumber!". also can't help that, on the tracks i've heard, no limit fail to exploit any kind of double-time, hihat-abuse tension on those 75bpm bounce beats: they sound genuinely sluggish, like the track is slowing your heartbeat and exerting it's gravitational pull, and like the mcs can hardly bear to spit out their rhymes. but this can be fun too sometimes; it can work just like any other stuff where you get that dragged-under, inverted rush. (i'm thinking of the sab and goatsnake and even portishead but i don't want to say it - yes, this makes it doom-rap.)
"bout it, bout it" (part three and they ain't done yet!) pretty much fits the bill - it really is fucking slow! and it has this instantly evocative whiny g-funk moog keyboard line - perhaps even too evocative of the g-funk era, which may be why nobody really wants to use the sound anymore, and why at first i thought this song was a west-coast parody! - and it has p twisting and grunting and spluttering, and cam delivering the clearest-enunciated verse ever - it also has that dude who turns up on every cam record, julez santana, but i can't bring myself to be interested in him. cam and p compliment each other well and ensure that i've been playing this song many, many times over.
i feel like i've been preconditioned to find everything master p and his fellow no limit soldiers put out to be essentially worthless; he is certainly recognized as a rap-mogul phenomenon and an interesting character, but its almost like his music exists only so people can feel ok listening to cash money records - "i'm alright listening to this objectionable music because i know there's someone out there making it even dumber!". also can't help that, on the tracks i've heard, no limit fail to exploit any kind of double-time, hihat-abuse tension on those 75bpm bounce beats: they sound genuinely sluggish, like the track is slowing your heartbeat and exerting it's gravitational pull, and like the mcs can hardly bear to spit out their rhymes. but this can be fun too sometimes; it can work just like any other stuff where you get that dragged-under, inverted rush. (i'm thinking of the sab and goatsnake and even portishead but i don't want to say it - yes, this makes it doom-rap.)
"bout it, bout it" (part three and they ain't done yet!) pretty much fits the bill - it really is fucking slow! and it has this instantly evocative whiny g-funk moog keyboard line - perhaps even too evocative of the g-funk era, which may be why nobody really wants to use the sound anymore, and why at first i thought this song was a west-coast parody! - and it has p twisting and grunting and spluttering, and cam delivering the clearest-enunciated verse ever - it also has that dude who turns up on every cam record, julez santana, but i can't bring myself to be interested in him. cam and p compliment each other well and ensure that i've been playing this song many, many times over.
17.7.02
"born slippy" provokes mass suicide attempt.
two people died who were at saturday's fatboy slim beach shindig, which is terrible, but surely it is an overreaction to cancel everything at brighton beach ever?? spizzazzz was really looking forward to the t4 music event (as if vernon kaye and june sarpong could start a riot!). we didn't go to the fatboy thing, but a walk around brighton afterwards suggested most people had a fun and relaxed time.
(excellent commentary on reaction to the event at no rock'n'roll fun - yes, we do read other websites! like nylpm [the dude who runs it has recently featured two classic biggie songs in his top ten - when will he write about them??] and the very addictive hiphopsite news section, and some other stuff we will have in the links bar when we can be arsed to put it up.)
two people died who were at saturday's fatboy slim beach shindig, which is terrible, but surely it is an overreaction to cancel everything at brighton beach ever?? spizzazzz was really looking forward to the t4 music event (as if vernon kaye and june sarpong could start a riot!). we didn't go to the fatboy thing, but a walk around brighton afterwards suggested most people had a fun and relaxed time.
(excellent commentary on reaction to the event at no rock'n'roll fun - yes, we do read other websites! like nylpm [the dude who runs it has recently featured two classic biggie songs in his top ten - when will he write about them??] and the very addictive hiphopsite news section, and some other stuff we will have in the links bar when we can be arsed to put it up.)
15.7.02
the question this week's chart poses is would fischerspooner have gone top 10 if they didn't fuck about so much? the way "emerge" is structured always seems forced to me. i mean, yes that's a really good synth line, but they came up with a proper classic euro-pop, snap-like chorus and then made us all wait far too long for it - perhaps so it could fit some wacky stage show; perhaps so nu-electro people wouldn't get turned off by the simplicity of verse-chorus-verse (or chorus-chorus-chorus); perhaps to distance themselves from what is thought of as faceless, personality-less dance music, to show a certain refinement in case we talked about fischerspooner in the same breath as shakedown.
the nu electro scene where their music has been allowed to evolve probably has different values to the ones that fostered "at night" - i don't really know much about it beyond some token mp3s and that mix cd on the front of muzik magazine. however, i had assumed it was still about dancing: "set it off" by peaches (especially that really good remix) didn't bother with this pointless structure-tampering; it was pretty much a good dance tune with some (in the context of right now) bold cheapo-synth textures and swearing.
the mix of "emerge" that gets played on the radio seems more than a bit defeatist; all that teasing and building up to something that lasts for like a minute! it generally makes me frustrated and wound up, and very happy i've never heard it in a club, where i would undoubtedly want to punch the dj in the face unless he had a second copy to cut up, old school grandmaster flash-style. whatever, maybe it only says something about my current listening habits and my lack of patience. it's a shame though, because there aren't many songs i can think of where i'd bother to wait for the melodramatic climax if the build-up is so drawn out. "emerge" genuinely has a great chorus that everyone in the country should be singing along to and turning up when it comes on, but instead i think it failed to make a strong impact for a really dumb set of reasons, and now the oppurtunity has been wasted.
the nu electro scene where their music has been allowed to evolve probably has different values to the ones that fostered "at night" - i don't really know much about it beyond some token mp3s and that mix cd on the front of muzik magazine. however, i had assumed it was still about dancing: "set it off" by peaches (especially that really good remix) didn't bother with this pointless structure-tampering; it was pretty much a good dance tune with some (in the context of right now) bold cheapo-synth textures and swearing.
the mix of "emerge" that gets played on the radio seems more than a bit defeatist; all that teasing and building up to something that lasts for like a minute! it generally makes me frustrated and wound up, and very happy i've never heard it in a club, where i would undoubtedly want to punch the dj in the face unless he had a second copy to cut up, old school grandmaster flash-style. whatever, maybe it only says something about my current listening habits and my lack of patience. it's a shame though, because there aren't many songs i can think of where i'd bother to wait for the melodramatic climax if the build-up is so drawn out. "emerge" genuinely has a great chorus that everyone in the country should be singing along to and turning up when it comes on, but instead i think it failed to make a strong impact for a really dumb set of reasons, and now the oppurtunity has been wasted.
14.7.02
I have no doubt that the live sound will be great - a lot of those re-recorded In Search Of songs sound wonderful, and I'm sure they are learning with each new recording they do. I'm confident that this will be great - listen to Pharell's enthusiasm! I'm sold on that alone. I can't imagine this guy getting so worked up about lackluster music.
13.7.02
westwood's voice cannot be traced back, he is a cypher, his style is unique and therefore should be applauded.
justin is apparently dating janet jackson now !?! but yeah his album is gonna be bonkers.
justin is apparently dating janet jackson now !?! but yeah his album is gonna be bonkers.
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