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)

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!

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!

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?!

motherfucker, couldn't you save that till its actually christmas!? and also till we've put up the liberty x christmas medley mp3 where all their songs have added sleigh bells!?

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!

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'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!

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!