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?