it's funny because it's true

skillz comes with another annual rap up of topical punchlines! look for him to start a blog in 04 if rawkus still won't put out his album.

"everybody forgot about the girl that made the 'uh oh' song"

:(

03: what aguilera done did



ahh i love aguilera! just look at these covers, that "can't hold us down" one must be the coolest thing i've seen all year, except for elf. out of all megastar types she elicits the most interesting reactions. at the time c.h.u.d. (chud!) was released all the internet shit about her was like, "oh it's obvious aguilera and lil kim have reached some kind of nadir in the trend of looking like dead-eyed prostitute freaks." no it is not fucking obvious, you creeps! maybe they are just having fun with style and you all hate women? guilty until proven innocent!

she put out four singles this year from her ancient album and tried to come up with the perfect release schedule:

winter: warming and super-affecting semi-ballad (which i sometimes think is the greatest song ever released)

spring: unlikely rock-classical fusion! which sounds like that en vogue "free your mind" song! (spring is a good time for seemingly more ambitious songs because everyone is just happy it got a bit warmer and will give some stupid shit a chance)

summer: the r'n'b banger with themed sticky summer video (ok it's not really that much of a banger but that's cool, it has that terrible faux-dancehall coda which makes it worth listening to!)

christmas: the realer-than-real proper ballad with no handlebars which most spizzazzz non-writers think is better than "beautiful".

now go copy that schedule, megastars!

03: what twista did

on "slow jamz", a song about twista and kanye's favourite songs to play while sexing, a woman's voice comes in (because they sex ladies, ok!) and critiques kanye's verse/sexing performance, telling him he's going too slow, and kanye is like, "damn baby i can't do it that fast but i know somebody who can - twista!!" because twista raps really fast! that's the coolest thing ever! i didn't really check for twista much until a couple of months ago, or maybe i thought of him as novelty and only good for "is that your bitch". his rep is always as a rahzel-style technique-freak of nature crazy dude. to illustrate, here is a picture of him wearing a straight-jacket.



see, that settles it! this rep has obviously hindered him if lazy motherfuckers like me haven't really paid attention. "slow jamz" changed that for a bunch of reasons:

- when he starts mimicking the sample in the background ("i be sippin hennessy / play some r'n'b / while i smoke a b / you can preferably / find that i'm a g") it's straight alchemy like he just pulled the sword out of the rap stone.

- it's always cool to hear rappers talking about other music, they are normally more interesting than some internet tosser.

- "no matter how much of a thug you see / i still spit it like it's r'n'b" is the new guiding principle behind my entire life.

so after that i was like, hold up, did i even listen to that rob them co-hyped rmx of "like a pimp" properly? um, no. twista's whole verse is basically saying "i know full well i'm on 03's heaviest beat!", like he can stretch his flow around the beat and take advantage of being on it for all the people out there who can't! it's love. you don't even have to listen to busta because he's on last! it turns out he also killed the less famous (completely ignored!) other rmx of "mundian to bach ke". his album will probably be one of the highlights of 04.

03: what jay-z did

at the beginning of 03, the world was still reeling from jay's putting-out-a-double-album-of-really-good-songs attempt at career sabotage. thank god he bounced back from that one by releasing a single album of really good songs instead! before the comeback, he dropped the amazing s carter collection mixtape. that "bump bump bump" freestyle was so perfect i spat out my double latte (premium coffee being a popular fad at the time). it's probably the wittiest and greatest thing he put out all year, so great that lil missy quoted this line everyday for six months: "i came into this game wantin more paper than puff / now i realize puff paper ain't enough".

once she was done quoting that, "frontin" had been out for a while and suddenly everyone everywhere was saying to their loved one: "anytime your name was brought up i would act all nonchalant in front of a audience / like you was just another shorty i put the naughty on but / truth be told you do me for a loop". if you didn't do it then don't be surprised if your girlf/boyf breaks up with you on christmas eve, having built up a rap-related wall of discontent for half the year.

and there were at least five more great songs jay-z lit up, even though most of the black album was stiflingly heavyweight boringness:

1) put it in the air with mop (still awaiting a proper 12" release!)
2) encore (totally the best song off b.a. until um, kardinal offishall drops his remix version!)
3) crazy in love with beyonce (jay's verse strangely derided by people who are insane)
4) get by (remix) with talib kweli and others (first sign of his winky winky i'm too clever to be gangsta approach but i still love that shit! )
5) 99 problems (totally the second best song off b.a. until i drop my remix version!)

so yeah, the last thing jay did this year was to release an accapella version of the black album for everyone to ruin with their awful jazz-hop beats, a cynical move based on the strange popularity of that nas god's stepson shit. i'm gonna buy it but i'm allowed to be annoyed anyway!

we still love you, jay-hova.

disappointingly, this stuff tastes really foul.

nelly furtado - powerless (say what you want)



the week that "baby one more time" came out, me and lil missy went to the shops. missy was all ready to buy the cd single but, as she will never let me forget, i strenuously advised her to get "cut chemist suite" by ozomatli instead. now listen, that's still a good tune! anyway it seems pertinent to my love of "powerless", i suppose because when n furtado guested on jurassic five and swollen members songs, it was suddenly obvious she was trying to be the diva version of those dudes - which boils down to, 'let's all have really, really self-conscious fun! sometimes with a message!'

the message on "powerless" is about taking the power back from people who try to water down your realness. it comes off a bit like the manic street preachers: "we take the culture and contort / perhaps only to distort what we are hiding." no doubt, nelly! i like the attempt to bridge the gap between universal empowerment anthem and totally unrelatable stuff about being made to look whiter on magazine covers. and i like that banjo!

they should call it channel spizzazzz

mastermind troopers are apparently down with dj touchie of musical mob fame. one of them is called lady discreet!

more here.

channel u

when it comes to music channels, we don't normally like to go further than kerrang tv on the digi box because then you get into the sleazy realm of that classical channel that surely no one in the world watches and fucking scuzz (yes, well done for being scuzzy and lame and liking screamcore or whatever and probably not even able to afford to do a jackass rip-off like urrrr dirty sanchez!*), but then on tuesday we discovered channel u! there are at least three reasons why it is amazing:

1) they play pretty much only proper ghetto classics (seen on tuesday: "santana's town" and "ruff ryders anthem", one after the other!) and weird brit-hop/ukg that no one has ever heard of! (the current number one requested video by *cough* mastermind troopers is super heavy and sounds a bit like "i luv u"!)

2) in the round-up of new videos added to the playlist, two were acclaimed for their lack of chorus!

3) the engineers have turned up the bass to wildly unprofessional levels! so everything is louder than on any other station, and even on a shitty tv you will hear bass frequencies on "milkshake" you didn't know existed!

go and watch it right now.

* you know, dirty sanchez is the thing where they do stupid things and laugh ear-splittingly loudly about it. through the entire program. HAHAHAHA SHUT UP!

the top ten

pet shop boys - miracles

i've barely heard any pet shop boys but you know when people are talking about girls aloud or something and they're like, "oh it's just a great pop single! how i delight in the arcane magic of the three minute pop song! pop pop pop!", they are always secretly holding all other songs up to these fucking dudes! and abba! fuck that!

crooklyn clan ft fatman scoop, faith evans, julia stiles, black sheep & e crunk - be faithful

actually 4real it's about time black sheep got to be on a number one! scoop appeared on zane the other week and did his thing over like, the white stripes and some other indie motherfuckers. let me tell you, no one came out of that shit well! least of all me for listening to it.

outkast - hey ya

hiphop connection is not a magazine i am likely to agree with, mainly because everyone who writes for it is completely insane. the center pages have a hiphop honey/game girl on one side and then like, shortee blitz's top ten current faves on the other! ahh i've gone blind! however, sometimes it is very funny, and their "hey ya" rvw was spot-on: essentialy, this song is ok as a little mp3 curio or if you want to actually sit through that interminable andre 3000 album, but as a radio/video blitz ("oh what a fantastic pop single!") it is the most annoying shit anyone has ever heard.

kevin lyttle - turn me on

steady eyes! in the video it is kind of like k lyttle is an old portrait who's eyes have been cut out and someone else is watching you through the holes. his gaze followed me all the way to hmv! to buy this record! because it's good!

britney ft madonna - me against the music

my three favourite songs off the britney album:

1) the fast one where she raps the verses and then hits us off with an incredible drivetime chorus! ahh the rush is killing me! i think this might be the best song ever.

2) the one which could be no doubt! it made me kind-of sad that real reggae has replaced fake reggae in the charts. where is the fake reggae meant to go?? thanks a fucking bunch, s paul!

3) the one that features the ying yang twins and is called "(i got that) boom boom"! (being only the third best song on the album when it features the ying yang twins and is called "(i got that) boom boom" means it is a terrible failure anyway but nevermind!)

lemar - 50/50

the beat is a bit like "can't knock the hustle" by jay-z! but hey look, lemar's name is almost lamer! cool! anyway "can't knock the hustle" sucked as well, like jay wins over the streets with that "dead presidents/ain't no nigga" 12 but then follows it with an awkward mary j chorus type song!? (look at the parallels! lamer won us over with that song about dancing... possibly dancing in the streets while hustling) you would have thought if you can't get a collab with mary j right then you might as well give up! but jay didn't give up, he made 60 million more albums. maybe it will work out the same for lamer.

busted - crashed the wedding

everyone says the video for this is heavy, but... ok look it really is! the song is good too but i dunno what to say about busted anymore, i feel like i have been writing about them every week for longer than i can remember, even though i haven't actually mentioned them for months. people need to take a bit longer between albums so i can think up some new shit! it is kind of disturbing that they are like the only representatives of punk pop left in the charts, i heard that new blink 182 song the other day and it was ugly!

alex parks - maybe that's what it takes

jesus christ, stop singing like that!

girls aloud - jump

fantastic pop! so energetic and brash! god i wish beyonce wouldn't do ballads!

(it sucks!)

just pretend nothing is at number one this week.

six reasons to love "slow"

1)s
2)y
3)n
4)t
5)h
6)s

jay-z - 99 problems

it's been a good year for rappers rediscovering proper old-school d.i.y. stiffness instead of some fake re-imagining with big "this is meant to be old school, do you understand?!" samples. "can't stop wont stop" and "when you hear that" off state property 2 bring the drum machine heaviness, but "99 problems", like "fix up look sharp" and "put it in the air", channels the original rock rap rampage style. there are rules it must abide: 1) use - if not "the big beat" itself - a big beat 2) rhyme in a kind of 03 skooly dmc lazy wisecrack style that's totally different from any other song you do 3) if you have to ruin this perfect marriage of guitarless rock and rap with actual guitars, make them sound like big helicopters!

"99 problems" sticks to the rules, which obviously makes it the best song on the black album. at the same time, if jay wants to drop stuff like this, it seems like it really should be his last album. (see also: how he wants to rhyme like talib kweli! step away from the mic dude!)

hillary duff - so yesterday

i missed the lizzie mcguire movie but lil missy tells me miranda is barely in it at all so fuck that rip-off shit! it was weird when miranda turned up in buffee as a [censored cuz missy hasn't seen it]. this song is aight - it's likable and it's sung by lizzie mcguire, but it is probably on spizzongs as an illustration of how little non-rap good stuff is on the radio. that pink punk shit is ok but jesus christ, just look at these songs on the radio one a list:

starsailor - born again??
the thrills - don't steal our sun??
angel city - love me right??
stereophonics - since i told you it's over??

none of these are as awful as "pass that dutch", but still, pull your socks up people-who-can't-rhyme! kylie doesn't count because she is about as rap as it gets.

twista ft kanye west & jamie foxx - slow jamz

this is a funny record, i think that's the most important thing. i mean twista's flow is completely ridiculous even when you get used to him because dude will sound the same over any beat on any subject! kanye's sing song style is sweet and pretty funny too, like the sample is the pet he's had since age four and he wants to show everyone how much he loves it. (also he gets the funniest/best/corniest line the indie dude who lives downstairs will quote to you: "she got a light skinned friend look like michael jackson/got a dark skinned friend look like michael jackson") the drums are maybe the greatest thing of all - the flurry of hi hats and toms at the end of the loop is beautiful! kanye is all about lightness of touch. the chorus isn't that hot but who cares. choruses suck anyway, except for the one on "flip reverse".

if you haven't heard "slow jamz" then wait until you hate every other song ever, because this is warm and funny enough to sustain you for weeks!

rob them co vindicated!

beyonce ft lloyd banks - steppin it hotter

like everyone else, i hate it when super-talented and successful women release amazingly cool r'n'b songs. i can only speculate that they are fembots incapable of human feeling who will eventually murder us all. with hot beats and coffee beans! run everyone! still, before beyonce reveals her gameplan she has recorded this new version of "baby boy", which loses the chorus completely to rip some ini kamoze instead. this is maybe my favourite kind of rmx, where artist dude gets to critique their own song: 'man, even ini kamoze is better than the "baby boy" chorus!' implies beyonce, and she's right - it was easily the shittest part of the original, but thinking about it, sean paul was kinda bad too. oh look, he's gone as well! 's paul's had the charts on lock all summer, how about someone who looks more like craig david?' step up, l-l-l-l-lloyd! dude looks more like c david than c david does! the production on the original was tight but kind of cold-steel. obviously the only choice was to lay down the stalag bassline (or whatever sister nancy is using on "bam bam"), the warmest and comfiest sound of all time! it's like beyonce used her fembot powers to read my mind!

missy elliott - pass that dutch

omg this is the worst song ever!

heatmakers ft juelz santana - where i'm from

you know when you're listening to the diplomats and you hear one of the heatmakers tracks and they've got some amazingly hot vocal sample and you're like "whoa... "i'm ready".... that's so true, i am ready". well here's the news: it wasn't a sample, it was one of these heatmakers dudes speeding their voice up like a fucking phoney. (check that recent de la song with yummy from tha rayne where jay so-called dilla makes her voice sound weird and too high! "sick of r'n'b bitches over bullshit raps [unless they are dehumanized with production tricks so jeru won't laugh at us]" de la are annoying!)

um, actually it probably was a sample, but "where i'm from" is heatmakers pulling a n*e*r*d move and striding to the front of the track, not to compete on rap terms, but to bring the rock. the "paranoid" riff rock! except really it's more like rock-soul, and they keep the usual clomp-clomp drums. (sometimes drum patterns are so perfunctory that it has to be some kind of statement!) i don't know how many heatmakers there are or who's singing but that's cool. it's a nice voice. and then there's juelz with dazzling duck and weave technical tour de france-type verse.

it's not that different from any dipset track really, heatmakers have always brought some rock love/hate, but right now there's so much fire that even this playful inversion of formula can sound awesome and special.

britney ft madonna - me against the music

all britney's best moments are evil. an evil chord change or enunciation or phrase (i ain't going through these moments like we didn't all hear them a million times but even "don't let me be the last to know" had evil drums), it's all about scrunch-faced creeping and haunted microhouse of horrors arrangements. after a relatively evil-free couple of years, "me against the music" is promising cuz i can list several more than one evil thing:

- the fake strings (proper max martin minor key evil!)

- the bassline (although it is more a wide-eyed original sin evil)

- the track-cutting in the second verse (straight mixing board switch flipping like old dub records cutting is evil and gangsta!)

- britney's entire vocal (ahhhh!)

this is all good stuff, which makes it even more of a shame that madonna's bit is like the stupidest thing ever, jesus christ! "come over here i've got something to show you" yeah dude, well let me show you the motherfucking door! it's only a few bars but her appearance brings bad vibes and extra-musical lameness that's tiring more than anything. stop this foolishness!

the party break update

motherfuckers are trying to gentrificate fatman scoop. just this morning we were watching mtv and "be faithful" came on. it was cool for like one second cuz i didn't know there was a video, but shit is problematic:

- there's no credit for the crooklyn clan or faith evans. i mean come on, i know scoop gives it his all with the party chants and shit, but dude should get a proper job before he gets sole credit on anything. i started shouting like that once at a club but instead of making me the toast of the pre-club barristas, they tossed my ass out and banned me for three months.

- the video is on that stupid skint/uk dance lam0r tip where a computerized scoop has a big head and goes around some toytown place which as far as i remember is what happened in the "sweet like chocolate" video too, like you can just apply that technique to any song ever. still, i'm sure mixmag are impressed. the only way this song should be heard if you aren't actually dancing to it is to watch julia stiles rip it up in save the last dance, a moment almost as amazing as when she danced on a table to "hypnotize" in ten things i hate about you. don't pretend it didn't change your life too.

- this means the final credit should run crooklyn clan featuring faith evans, julia stiles, e crunk, & fatman scoop.

- it's being rereleased because of some album called something like fatman scoop presents party breaks volume one, which will probably be hot but then what will be left for the dj's who want to drop an element of surprise in their hiphop set if everyone is listening to these tracks on their aiwas. people will have to come up with their own blends. honestly, it doesn't bear thinking about, so i won't.

sean paul - feel alright

first off, i wanna let the world know i was chumped by greensleeves. coolie dance was my first ever riddim lp, could have been a defining moment in my musical life, could have led to dropping all my spare money on these things, but is the best track on there? is it fuck. it's probably not even the fault of greensleeves: s paul is a big shot signed to atlantic, they probably don't want his newest tracks licensed before they've had a chance to release them ("feel alright" sounds like a possible worldwide smash).

but fuck dancehall anyway for making me sound like some whiny dude who's mad cuz they didn't include his favourite bob dylan outtake on some shit! i dunno, it might even be its non-appearance on the album that makes it seem like the definitive coolie dance track. none of the other versions have the addictive doom-chant bass line though; none of them are as lithe and confident (s paul can afford to almost do without that annoying "do it like a genie wind up yourself" refrain); and none of them have s paul himself, who is still inhuman, but of course his ridiculously tight command of every single hook makes me want to be inhuman too.

(lithe isnt quite right actually, nor is sinuous or any other porno-adjective - basically it sounds like a penis; the best penis ever in fact!)

the new dmx album...

...is mad boring, except for the singles and that awesome one with cam'ron ("we go hard", check it!). also it has that stupid sepia photoshop tint on the cover, there's some things that cannot be forgiven! i don't wanna dwell on that however, so here is a reminder of better times in the form of the greatest sticker ever:

liberty x - jumpin'

this is like a three-and-a-half minute attempt to convince the audience that we are listening to a good chorus! like, if you lay it over enough different variations of this mono-chord acoustic jam ("like i love you" completely misunderstood by british people bah!) it will eventually sit well and become memorable; all the toil it took to record the live bits and lx's vocals and make those synth noises will be worth it.

as always i want lx to win because they are fucking cool! i dunno about the first two minutes, i suppose they're good mainly for setting up the massive finale: first the "say uh oh" breakdown with hot synth stabs, then a holly valance pretend dancehall stereo pingpong bit, then the return of the chorus with heavy groove bass (urrr) (lx never sell out by using gross guitars though!), then the chorus with just acoustic guitar, then an even heavier return, and by this time it is reminding me of that rage against the machine song where he's going "fuck you i won't do what you tell me" at the end (incidentally a fave of legendary spizz non-poster and liberty x superfan jack cable).

so sometimes i'm thinking "calm down lx dudes!" and other times i give in and headbop to it. whatever, liberty x's rawness is being loveable and trying too hard, which means they remain raw!

snoop dogg/nate dogg/warren g - so fly

they were playing the new snoop rhyming over hits cd in the record shop today. any time between 94 and 98 this would have been the greatest cd ever, just to hear his very particular style over beats that weren't straight west coast. but in 03 snoop and his fans and probably his management have already played these "what if" games, so he's rhymed over timbaland, premier, no limit, fucking everything! guest appearances and films have made me tire of his persona too.

from the brief listen i got he wasn't doing anything funny with other people's songs like g unit do (there was a lame version of "react" which, a year on, sounds like the most annoying beat ever released anyway). so what's the point? well "so fly" uses monica's "so gone" instrumental to amazing better-than-g-funk-era effect. it doesn't sound like a winner immediately but when nate dogg sings "riding in my car/and i'm listening to the radio" it's just like "ahhhhh", you know it all makes sense and everything is right with the world. the rule must be that if you give nate a beautiful heart-breaking beat to sing over he will raise everyone's game because snoop sounds great too!

it is also testament to this enduring beat, which is nearly my favourite of the year but everyone else i know hates. wtf is wrong with you people!

zane

zane zane zane zane! in july i was cautiously optimistic that zane's giddy rap love would make the evening session hot - well, he still can't make terrible guitar music sound good but a few months later i am still listening. he still rhymes along with every rap song and makes scratching noises and stuff. i think it must be more than just zane though, it feels good to be into a show where i'm not predisposed to like almost all of it (semtex on 1xtra, coming from a fresh ukg mental-beat perspective, probably has the best hiphop show in the uk but it gets boring when you know he's never going to drop some awful dm and jemini clanger to laugh at). it's a nice, safe test of what i can actually stomach hearing right now, and it allows me to lamely theorize on music i don't have a clue about ("yeah man, shuffletech kinda fell off!") by citing one song. so here's the breakdown on zane lowe type music:

guitar stuff- seems to have got even less memorable since i last regularly listened to the session in about 99; the best songs are normally the ones that cross over to daytime radio or mtv anyway, like that muse one with the big synth bassline. or that pretty coral song ("pass it on" ) which was bizzarely the best thing on daytime radio one for a while. the new strokes song is good. the less popular stuff seems more interested in drum patterns and making people dance nowadays but they are terrible at it. i miss when everything was nu metal and punk pop.

dance stuff- new drum+bass is secretly the best thing in music right now! haha fooled you! no, it's aight though, all the dnb played is absolutely huge-sounding and really powerful for the first minute, like it has learnt some kind of lesson from nu metal about being overwhelming and brash and immediate. however, from the point of view of sitting on my fat ass at home, it is completely useless after that one minute (more so than old dnb which had rap samples and nice patterns). i bet new dnb converts are having mental fun in the clubs.

most of the grey area electroclash/house/indie dance songs are really fun, especially the new felix da housekat featuring amazing metal riff and little else.

rap stuff - i mean evening session style rap music! to be fair, this encompasses pretty much everything now, as long as it has something which makes it slightly lame: "milkshake" (evening session dudes love geisha girl r'n'b and funny sounds), "ghetto muzik" (evening session dudes love pretend electro and funny sounds), "cameltoe" (evening session dudes love geisha girl pretend electro and funny sounds), everything by mark ronson (evening session dudes love mop and funny sounds). if you love all that stuff it means you can be an evening session dude like me. there's uk stuff like ty as well, he's always shocking me by being decent. sometimes i suspect that if zane had the chance he would only play the beatnuts because he is plainly one of those dudes who likes them way too much.

he has also dropped "never scared" a few times, i think it's getting a uk release - this is very important and good for anyone selling old dirty south 12s on ebay. it is very important and bad for anyone buying old dirty south 12s on ebay.

there are other kinds of music, some of them even played by zane, but i can't be bothered with them.

ashanti - rock wit u (remix)



it grafts in the obvious m jackson song but to dwell on that would be to miss the point (even if it does end up sounding a lot like that dizzy crystal backdrop + michael's shy dark eyelashes in the video which is incidentally one of my favourite videos ever). instead think of how the too bright too open synth beams are shining into the really huge dilated pupils you can tell ashanti must have (yeah, she does sound a bit insane), or how cute the pan pipe interlude is in the midst of all that yearning! i just found out ashanti was born only 3 days before me... i am totally feeling her madness.

[post video hits viewing edit: it turns out that my favourite video should be the video for 'rock with you' but is instead the video for 'don't stop til you get enough' which is a good song and everything but not the right one in my head]





and i remember there being more green in it!

five new joints for the hottest week ever

drag-on - fireman

"i don't really wanna hurt nobody... i just wanna live my life" most of the drag-on album is this year's trina-style 'what can i get away with rhyming over' mental pop experiment, except it's way more awkward than diamond princess. there's an incredibly endearing wrongness that makes it special. "fireman" is clunky like some really old mobile, but it is sunny disco bounce with a probably super-famous sample that i can't place and therefore brilliant. at the end it breaks down to just the bassline and drag-on repeating "i'm your fire maaan". what the fuck!

jae millz - no no no

i know this one! it's dawn penn! yeah it's the classic "no no no" beat dipset-ized (if only this actually was a dipset song!) for 03 with dawn at the end of every eight bars. jae millz is some nyc freestyle champ who is probably too earnest for a beat this nice. there's also a ghostface version where he just rhymes straight over the original. it will be the hottest beat of september when everyone will do a version! ironically this song will sound terrible by then.

roscoe - smooth sailin

toffee brown is totally right, this is the record which had to be made (to save west coast rap). it is so good that dj rectangle could base an entire mixtape around it. maybe he will!

mary j blige - ooh

sometimes i like it when i think some song has a really nice bridge but it turns out to be the chorus! because bridges are great and choruses would do better to learn from them. mary's new sound is thankfully pretty much like her early nineties sound. she can actually convince me it might be worth aspiring to old soul records instead of it being an exercise in awfulness. also, just like mary, spizzazzz is not immune to going all roy ayers herbish in hot weather!

teedra moses ft jadakiss - you'll never find (a better woman)

when you hear this you kind of have to accept that "why don't we fall in love" deserves to be remade over and over again, because it invites the same glittery fur-coat adjectives. it opens with pretty strings and the most tentative kick drum scratch sample ever, surely a metaphor for the uncertainty in teedra's heart! (there should be a list of great kick drum scratch samples, it is my favourite r'n'b allusion to real hiphop!) then there's this amazing super-opulent fake guitar sound in the chorus that probably makes it even better than the amerie tune. in fact, maybe for pure painful twisted stomach realness it is closest to monica's "so gone" - i'm not sure how much i enjoy either song but they are both brutally effective.

lumidee - never leave you

think of pink ice cream (i am, to console myself that lumidee didn't get number one)

robbie williams - some shit

my sister claimed today that take that are getting back together, can anyone confirm this?! this song is just the worst thing ever, there is no stupid food analogy to make because no food could taste so bad. fuck r williams except for "rock dj" which is kind of hot! (and the entire take that canon.)

beyonce - crazy in love


my friend magda loves beyonce. we went out for vietnamese on friday night and she showed me all the photos from her trip to mexico. i love mexican food, i think because i really like capsicum. one of the more unusual things magda ate in mexico (apart from traditional mexican cuisine) was avocado icecream. she will kill me if i write what happened after she ate it but believe me, it was gross. magda is crazy in love with a mexican. the vietnamese food was great too! we ate enough for 4 people, the woman at the till was shocked. afterwards we still ran into a nearby bottle shop and bought kitkats. we are total pigs! i bet beyonce loves her food too.

benny benassi - satisfaction

consider me satisfied! crunchy like some horrible looking cheapo cheddar that is the tastiest thing ever. dude benny knows you can't go wrong with the built in fruity loops synth!

craig david - spanish


e crunk's special pasta recipe calls for spanish smoked paprika along with tuna and anchovies and a few other things. it sounds intensely spiced and salted and loaded with flavour. this song isn't any of those things but it has just as precarious a link to spain as e crunk's recipe. however craig does sound relaxed and the song effortlessly thrown together, just as i imagine e crunk expertly throwing his ingredients around in the pan.

e crunk admits: i may have stolen this recipe from tony and georgio

evanescence - bring me to life

evanescence are cool but wtf is with that mc dude not actually being in the band! he rescues evan (this may or may not be her name) from floating down a goth housing estate but that's not enough to get an invitation to join the band?? i mean the back and forth between the two of them is everything that's good about the song, i bet all other evanescence songs are terrible! i like the anonymous dudes in nu metal bands, they are normally big and burly. i bet they go to nandos like these rugby dudes we saw in there and drink insane amounts of fizzy pop.

stereophonics - maybe tomorrow


so this weekend i have eaten a lot of food. especially at the aforementioned 21st where we all went a bit crazy at the cake table and had at least 2 different kinds of cake each (there was a large and delicious selection!) afterwards we could hardly move. i felt very drowsy and the party was boring, and yet we couldnt get up and leave, we were all weighed down by pastry. this song makes me think of that post cake hour where we were exhausted and a bit sad but didn't do anything about it. if it was one of the cakes it would have been the plain chocolate cake with icing sugar dusted over the top, which was kind of stodgy.

deepest blue - deepest blue

it is impossible to really fuck with a "holiday"/"music sounds better with you" type bassline, it's like how salads always taste better when you're outdoors (salad tastes better with you!) and you've got fresh-ass lettuce with broad beans and ricotta (yeah that's right, ricotta that comes in a pouch! not some shitty tub) or something, but this could be the worst vocal ever to be placed over a bassline like this. really, who is this narc??

fast food rockers - fast food song


last night i was at a really tedious 21st birthday party with a house dj. there was lots of home made food there including a suspicious looking bright yellow dip. we smelled it and it was almost completely odourless. meanwhile the beat was going on and on. later on an empty beer mug ended up catapulted into the untouched dip. you would think fast food rockers would be the opposite of homely unidentified dip but this song is just like that yellow mess and while i listen to it i am the beer mug.

the uk top 15

pink - feel good time

this is still very very good and silly, like if you were on a bruschetta tip and you put some weird stuff on there like smoked mackerel with aubergene. but then along comes the breakdown, and you're like wha? why is this happening? this is proof that w orbit will never be real dance! recently lil missy has got me into "if it makes you happy" by s crow - it is on a similar completely useless go-nowhere breakdown but strangely forgivable tip.

no we do not like "in da pub"

and if you all thought we did you should read closer and stop listening to your worst premier beats of all time compilations.

what must i go through/to show you/shit is real

oh what the hell, here they are:





i really like dj qui's earring! i am also very much looking forward to hearing yummy's duet with de la soul.

702 - trouble





i don't really have that much to say about this song except that it burbles along really prettily and yet warily and i love it so i wanted to put it on spizzazzz! i can't choose if 702 or tha rayne are better. at this stage tha rayne are a bit ahead because they don't have any neptunes songs yet. however, the big brother neptunes fiend types that e crunk was talking about think 702's neptunes songs are bad and boring, so that evens it up a bit. i really like i still love you. also, i still love the neptunes. tha rayne is a bit cuter. they have had troubles with their line up, but then so did destiny's child. i don't know, i've come this far and i still can't decide! i think i have to hear more tha rayne. here is a picture of them, i have bigger and better ones but it wouldn't be fair to 702, after all i am talking about their song.

tha rayne - didn't you know

no, i had no idea! for real, i didn't know who tha rayne were except for the very witty and bizzare remake of "juicy" they did with next last year, (next run out of biggie-style namechecks so they just drop boyz II men twice!) but now here they are fully fledged with beautiful voices but no picture cover (fuckers!). if you were going to put this in a state-of-r'n'b report it could go with "never leave you" for its scaled down crispness and clarity of emotion. there's something about the producer, rich harrison (he did crazy in love and the whole amerie album!), that fits with r kelly too - like, not hating r'n'b and trying to fuck it up so your jaded older brother likes it; they're not trying to trick you, even if they can come up with forward-thinking sonics. r'n'b will still be there when you leave and it will still be great!

roscoe - smooth sailin'





probably one of my biggest weaknesses is how prone to nostalgia and sentimentality i am and this song triggers all of that in me especially the desire to run off some corny prose about shimmery asphalt. i would have too except that today i've been stuck inside all day with a motherfucker of a head cold doped up to my watery red rimmed eyeballs and shuffling around the house in tatty grey ug boots. i feel cold and ugly and bored. young roscoe is high and fly and enjoying the sunshine. i can almost remember what that's like!

pink - feel good time

*

we went to see charlie's angels: full throttle yesterday. it is clearly one of the best films ever made, which has added to my love for this already strangely likeable song. i suppose the main draw is william orbit - there, i said it! i mean pink is ok, i still like her voice enough, but orbit's dinky mad-professor production rewards people who listen too closely and care about stupid little sounds they hear on the radio. when things happen like the little crashing drums bridge on "feel good time", i want to hug him and say hey dude, thanks for caring because you didn't even have to put that in there! in fact, it makes little difference considering you have this mediocre chorus and a completely useless breakdown, but you put it there anyway especially for me to get a tiny rush from!

* sorry but pink and orbit both look terrible

come back charlie's angels hair, all is forgiven

ms dynamite - the jump off freestyle

nobody seemed to take any interest in it, but the uk rmx of ludacris' "southern hospitality" was hot like fire - especially the ms dynamite verse, where she sounds ready to burst from crazy superthug dancehall energy and just being on that beat. i would get mad excited being on "southern hospitality" too, even if i was playing fruity loops synth or something. now here she is riding another widely-praised super-producer beat - so what kind of shitty-ass flow is this?? "i'm still the voice of the youth/i speak the truth/that's why the press don't like me." it's all plain and smoothed out with no deep-ragga-voice/pretty-twee-voice contrast! possible reasons for this lameness:

1) "the jump off" is a terrible beat. for real, it is one of those beats you can convince yourself is hot without ever wanting to listen to it or dance to it. just because it has some clapping or whatever and it's timbaland! it's also fucking terrible for all mcs! it has already sucked the life out of lil kim and ms dynamite is its next victim.

2) dy is changing her flow for american headz because they can only feel plain-speaking, sensible flows and they don't want any aggro dancehall vibes (like sean paul) (?!?!) (there's also a rmx of "dy-na-mi-tee" with nas on the guest verse circulating on american mix-cds, thankfully with no bizzare concession to an imaginary conservative yank audience.)

3) maybe she has been like this for ages, i couldn't be bothered to listen to a little deeper all the way through. there is such a thing as loving salaam remi too much!

4) it's just a freestyle to tide things over till she gets some official stuff out and i'm taking it way too seriously.

first the fat boys break up / now every day i wake up

...waiting for a nu lp from hov'.

m.o.p. ft jay-z - put it in the air

that mtv dude who's taken over radio one's evening session is terrifying: he sang along to most of "shook ones pt 2" and keeps mimicking dizzee at the start of "fix up look sharp". it's rare for me to listen to the evening session but i don't think lamacq ever rhymed over mid-nineties grimy hiphop classics. at first it was scary and vaguely embarrassing, but it's understandable if zane is letting out the frustration that must come from sitting through a live 'cooper temple clause' set. i gave this a lot of thought and decided that if i was on radio one i would probably rhyme over stuff too in a stupid attempt to convey my love of hiphop and prove that i know the words. (knowing the words is important though, in fact it might be the most important thing ever - really, if you listen to a lot of hiphop and you can't recite whole verses then maybe you are listening to the wrong mcs!)

i mention this because zane will undoubtedly love "put it in the air", and because it is the accidental transatlantic cousin of "fix up look sharp" - hyperreal, unadorned classic drum sounds and some beautiful voices. the end. i don't remember where these sounds were used before but it probably didn't have the same mcs on it so who cares (ok, i do). i like it that m.o.p. don't always get good beats because when something like this (or "ante up", or "stick to ya gunz") comes along it's more shocking. and look how much love they have for each other!

dizzee rascal is cool

this dude was the only person to mention the new spizzazzz logo! and he likes shania and camp lo! (of course people remember camp lo!)

justin clones




well i've only spotted one so far but i thought i'd talk about him to follow on from missy's post. his name is thicke and he is the son of alan thicke, the dad from growing pains!



he has a song built on a sample of that crazy beethoven disco song called when i get you alone. his look is the visual equivalent of the beethoven song and he doesn't realise how silly he looks with his flowing leo lion's mane and that sleazy jade pendant and posing in a crouch! if he does realise i am not sure why he is doing it. he looks like he is dressed to impress at his first tantric sex class. he is from california.

there is a remix with jadakiss which may be better [post dl verdict: no it isn't]. but unless he stops singing about sex toys and cuts his hair i won't be able to stop mercilessly making fun of him with my sister, just like we used to do with his father alan! i guess he's kind of the mid point between justin and someone like enrique iglesias.

evanescence - bring me to life

wake me up when this boring song is over and lumidee is #1!

r kelly - ignition (rmx)

i am totally in awe of r's craft as a singer and songwriter and producer at the moment - it's particularly terrifying on the original "ignition" where he makes "let me stick my key in your ignition babe" sound like the most perfect, achingly beautiful line you could ever hear! it's weird though, how he is sounding more and more like lady saw or some other lady jamaican toaster. (but not lumidee.)

i hate the charts! i really wanted that craig david song to be in the top twenty so i could say sting is a better mc than fallacy.

xtina - fighter


e crunk says xtina is the coolest girl in the world but you know who i'm about to name here! but if lumidee didn't exist he's probably right. i really like the backup singer in the chorus. i feel like i should enrol in a tae bo class.

busta/mariah/rah digga/spliff starrrrrr - i know what you want

ROWR ROWR NOT MUCH LIKE A DUNGEON DRAGON! busta is on the official "never leave you" rmx - in fact he has also 'blessed' the "never scared" rmx, the "get by" rmx, and the "so gone" rmx. what the fuck busta, do you have a terminal disease!?

(people have probably been saying that since 94 but whatever!)

dannii minogue - don't want to lose this feeling


i was getting into this to begin with, it has realistic handclap sounds and rich disco production as perfected by kylie two albums back, but the chorus is weak and i zoned out halfway through. dannii sounds more dead than is acceptable even in disco. i've been listening to the lumidee acapella a lot and i think it would sound nice over moroder.

amy studt - misfit

lumidee lumidee lumidee lumidee lumidee lumidee lumidee lumidee lumidee lumidee lumidee lumidee lumidee lumidee lumidee lumidee lumidee lumidee lumidee lumidee lumidee lumidee lumidee lumidee lumidee lumidee lumidee lumidee lumidee lumidee. uh ohhh!

sean paul - get busy


when you dont dwell on sean paul's more alien aspects as previously discussed on spizzazzz this song is pretty good but it is the dirt on the sole of my shoes compared to never leave you

dj sammy - sunshine

dj sammy seems to generate incredible goodwill - i suppose because his songs are so full of love for big music and big emotion and even lil missy likes them despite nominally being trance or something. this is such a good song i could almost forget about lumidee. especially starting with beautifully recorded acoustic guitar and the build up to big synth heaven.

s club 7 - goodbye


oh no! it turns out i should have had my full attention on s club, not trying to remember b2k or pretending to think about lumidee :(
oh well goodbye was bad, i am not english so i have no sentimental attachment to s club, i just wanted it to be over with. they are much better when they are not dwelling on sad times.

b2k - girlfriend


i like the way b2k always have an element of surprise in their otherwise frighteningly seamless songs. this one has an off kilter section and playfully offkey singing (just like... !). i started writing this after the song finished and now i cant remember exactly what happens in it, all i can hear is s club. obv id rather have been distracted by lumidee again.

b2k - girlfriend

this reminds me to mention that creepy westwood last week when he was asking mario and b2k gross sex questions! they're like sixteen years old, it's improper to know what goes on in their hotel lobby! i bet he wouldn't ask lumidee questions like that! "girlfriend" is ok i suppose.

j-lo - i'm glad


every time i hear this song my head mutates the chorus into another song, i'm not sure what it is but it might be an amerie song. i also thought the collab w ll cool j was an amerie song at first (amerie also has done a song called all i have and one with ll) we all know lumidee is this year's amerie. so why is this song so bad!

xtm ft. annia - fly on the wings of love

very cool "my heart will go on" flute! i think literally flying on the wings of love would sound disturbingly like this song. if lumidee played the flute it would be the most beautiful sound anyone had ever heard. uh oh!

shania twain - forever and for always


i don't know, i have nothing against shania and man i feel like a woman has entered the pantheon of karaoke classics but i just think this song is meant for people a lot older than me. even if lumidee was singing this song i probably wouldnt feel it.

j timberlake - rock your body

man he's really gone downhill with the overly-groomed look - i swear it actually makes his songs sound worse! when the "cry me a river" video came out i was truly obsessed and i would flick through music channels a million times because he looked so good. it was pathetic! anyway yeah, now i'm starting to wonder how much i like him and even if he is a good dancer. perhaps only a lumidee colabo will rescue my love. also he should not go on million-date tours with aguilera and make "crazy in love" answer records instead! this is the new model for a successful career, dickface!

linkin park - faint


yeah this is great! way better than somewhere i belong. this was the first time i heard it and i want to hear it again. i bet lumidee would love it.

the thrills - big sir
this song is going for a riding a bike through the golden sunlight feeling and it quotes monkees lyrics wistfully. i don't like it but i don't not like it. while listening i was also looking at the picture of lumidee who i like a lot and who def pulls my strings much more in that late afternoon way. i really like her jacket!

electric six - gay bar

hey, imagine if lumidee was on this song, it would go "i wanna take you to a gay bar/gay bar/UH OHHHHH!" i can't front though, it's a fun song!

emma bunton - free me

also lumidee has rushed out her own version of "crazy in love" but she starts going "uh oh" again - like how many songs can you get away with that shit before people start to feel cheated or they start shouting at your concert if there's one song where she doesn't go "uh oh!". uh oh! i'd like to think ms dynamite got away from going "booo" all the time but lets face it, we all feel sliight disappoinment in every one of her songs other than "booo".

big brovas - our favourite things


i only saw a picture of big bros last week and i was surprised by how good looking they are because they sound a bit plain and like they're missing the point slightly. lumidee is still a million times hotter though. it annoys me that both their songs have that same waltz rhythm which is a trick that should be used to make a song stand out. their use of it is also too pantomimey.

WE INVENTED THE RMX AND THE CHARTS AND LUMIDEE

50 cent - in da club

there is no 50 update at the moment, except he is on the good rmx of "never leave you" saying lumidee is a superfreak porno star! lumidee looks kind of weird, like ashanti's pale half sister or something, but i keep looking at her. check it:



i have to be honest, i don't really care about any of these records because i'm thinking about lumidee.

mya/missy - my love is like... whoa

missy sounds like a boy in this song - i like it when she does this, for instance when she looked like little richard and/or prince in the hot boyz video. it has a tropical carmen miranda feeling, and even tho i think the last line in the chorus is kind of stupid ('and you're kissing it/ so whatchu think of it'... it's like when a coworker of mine that i hate makes a blindingly obvious comment and then nudges me and repeats it when i don't reply right away. missy has that vibe about her sometimes - a lot lately actually! - but it's pretty well restrained here, except for this line) this song is infectious and makes me wish it was summer here. the production is like a stretched out banana lounge version of aaliyah's 'extra smooth' and must have come out of the same batch as that kiley dean song.

beyonce/jay-z - crazy in love

i'm not sure i like it when people have one of those inconsequential epiphanies where they go "oh, ____ has just blown everything out the water and changed the face of ____ - in fact, it makes every other ____ song look fucking lame, you fucking lamer! especially ____!" but i suppose it might help massive musical changes happen. like if one of these renouncing dudes (who are perhaps normally the people with little emotional investment in the genre in question) said it in a pub then jo whiley or that dude from mtv2 might hear them and suddenly they're on the radio/tv going "yeah fuck mis-teeq, beyonce just locked down the 03 sound and it's exactly like main source circa 91!". mis-teeq get wind of this and suddenly they're making "live at the london grill 04" or a new version of "they reminisce over you" dedicated to the fourth member who left before they got famous! (incidentally she is about to put out a rubbish single!)

which is to say, i saw the "crazy in love" (two amazingly good loops; strong chorus; jay-z) video straight after that new mis-teeq one (complex synth'n'ting construction; average chorus; no jay-z) and i felt bad for thinking they sounded so lame in comparison.

spizzazzz meets kelly rowland



i saw in beat that kelly would be making an appearance at my local mindbogglingly humongous shopping complex so i cancelled everything i was supposed to be doing on that day and spent the next two weeks waiting for it to arrive.


this was good preparation for all the waiting you must do at a celebrity appearance. for a start it took a really long time to walk thru the carpark. i was also expecting to get lost but once i was inside i just headed towards the crowd of kids wagging school who were nonchalantly milling around on the level above centre stage.



down on the floor there were only very dedicated fans & weird ppl because you had to buy a kelly cd if you wanted to meet her. mostly it was the kind of very grownup acting teenage girl i'd wished i was when i was 14 but i ended up standing in queue behind a hardcore destiny's child fan (check the tattoo!) and in front of a "crazy" guy called smurfy who collects autographs.



smurfy had just come back from tennessee where he'd been harvesting wrestlemania autographs and meeting creed and guns'n'roses. at first it was interesting talking to him but after a while smurfy started yelling unfunny things out in response to the annoying guy from nova100 who was keeping the crowd occupied. eventually he went onstage and sang bits from the chorus of stole into a microphone held in his trembly wrists and won the vanilla slice you can see him eating in this picture, which one of the anonymous nova100 gofers had already taken a bite out of! this is about the time i got 'distracted' taking a lot of these bad grainy spy photos you can see



so yeah when kelly did finally turn up she was wearing a small tight black tracksuit with stilettos. she was very slight and graceful and looked like a swan. she said stuff about kangaroos and koalas and the outback and beaches (="what australia's really about") and "i love you" and then got straight to work with the signing! oh also destiny's child are not split up and beyonce and michelle love us too and hope to visit real soon. when she sat down behind the desk it was as though she was hardly even there, she had her head down and was signing autographs



at a furious rate, pausing only to have her photo taken with children or the disabled, and sometimes to wave at the girls who kept riding up and down the escalators yelling "WE LOVE YOU KELLYYYY". she seemed shocked when i presented my copy of writing's on the wall for signing, maybe because she has really bad hair on that. i don't know what i expected but she seemed distant. nice but not super nice. i wanted to ask her about working with joe budden and nelly but she seemed like she just wanted to get the day over with and i don't think i'd have got a straight answer from her anyway. so this story just makes it in on the tail end of hate week! whatever completely vague, insincere and cartoonish things she said about their country (she's also on record as saying she loves australia because it's just like america which probably isn't far off) her australian fans still love her tho, the best thing about the whole event was the private smiles on ppl's faces as they came away from their meeting (best examples not captured here).

five shitty songs produced by the neptunes

tha liks - best u can

this came out at that time in 01 when djs (one of whom may or may not have been me) were desperately picking up anything with the neptunes name on because people really really liked hearing "i just wanna love u" and "southern hospitality". those songs didn't really sound like anything else in their sets, so the logic went that maybe if you filled a whole hour with neptunes beats it would be like having a special magic key to open people's hearts and stop them walking right past you to the crappy upstairs room on the way back from smoking in the toilet.

so it was the path less travelled. it was the path to buying some absolutely terrible records. alkaholiks pretty much only sound good over dirty untouched funk samples, they don't need some awkward pattern that sounds like a sped-up version of one of rza's drum machine nightmares. i'm not even sure i believe they drink anymore.

ja rule - pop niggas

"certain niggas need to be kissin the ground that i walk / shuttin up when i talk, its rule in full floss" yeah whatever ja. sorry if i didn't recognize that you were in full floss. like pharrell and chad didn't give you this beat just to rip the piss. honestly, i like ja a lot sometimes but he has probably made the most embarrassing rap songs of this century.

that song on the second kelis album

don't act like you don't know what i'm talking about.

n*e*r*d - baby doll

did you ever play that n*e*r*d album and have a sudden moment of clarity where you thought, why am i listening to smart-arse weedheads make fun of all my favourite music? oh? no, me either. this is a pretty good song but there are lots of reasons to hate it anyway: there's some kind of spy-theme guitar preset on it that makes me want to bash my head against something; pharrell takes that whispering and sighing thing to it's natural conclusion and then carries on regardless; the re-recorded real instrument version is probably as horrendous as any other song with real instruments; the original version of the album never came out on vinyl - maybe i'd like it more if i had the chance to listen properly and not through my computer, huh; finally, it's just really annoying. ineptunes more like.

jay-z - excuse me miss

can jigga get his "grown man" on for a sec? ew! probably the worst jay-z single ever, and the most annoying video of the year, all thanks to pharrell and his creepy falsetto.

dj skribble and mr reds

four reasons i hate that stupid record with flipmode:

1) everyone i know was like, "oh e crunk loves this type of shit, he's gonna get this the day it comes out." man, i do not love when people make terrible comedy-sounding dance-hop records for some cringe-worthy breakdancing demonstration on kids satellite tv. (ok normally i would love it.) (also, it was cool when big ted used to present trouble.)

2) yesterday i heard "woo hah got you all in check" on the radio and i could finally listen with refreshed ears - busta kills it 4real! his staggered flow back then was genuinely exciting. it would hardly be fair to judge his current hotness on this record. ironically i am very much going to judge his current hotness on this record. busta sucks.

3) all flipmode songs suck too, except when rah digga gets a verse.

4) come on, deep down you know it's the worst song ever.

lisa la bella maffia

i swear i was excited as anyone about lisa going solo, i mean you don't get to be the first lady of so solid by being embarrassingly shit. you have to be really cool and you have to put up with megaman and harvey clowning around like a pair of dicks while you're being cool, shit ain't easy! i assumed the icy cool thing would be the settee around which the living room of her career could be assembled, like you know, she could have got some weird sounds and kept the house tempo. but all "it's all over" proves is that the supposedly glittering post-ukg brit urban explosion = let's all go back to making completely inept fake-grimey pop-r'n'b again. thanks a bunch lisa! once again, who the fuck decided no one could make proper ukg pop records anymore??

the 50 cent update

what's been happening with the cleanest-smelling rapper in the game?

- he put out this dvd, and i was like, come on i'm not buying a fucking dvd of 50 cent trying to talk through his bullet hole about the same shit he always talks about (the only really good thing he ever said in an interview was about ashanti's sideburns), but me and lil missy were watching it in the record shop and dude is just walking the streets, looking for fans or hustling or something, when he sees some cops and hilariously pretends to steal their guns! that's gangsta.

- jay-z jumped on 50's rhyming-over-other-people's-beats mixtape style on his s carter collection and made you look like a dick for saying he fell off.

- the 50 cent bootleg 12" guide: they're all shit! and they all have terrible sound quality! except this top-value one which has the 50/tupac song (actually a bit rubbish compared to the 50/biggie one, but you get the instrumental), the completely amazing snoop rmx of "p.i.m.p" (number one spizzazzz summer anthem), the sean paul collab (number 382 spizzazzz summer anthem), and finally the g-g-g-g unit remake of busta's "i know what you want", which is approximately four times as good as the original. all on a single record! that's some half-price-tix for the chinese state circus type value. i'm still looking for "magic stick" on 12 so i don't have to buy lil kim's shitty album. (also there's the nike ad rmx of "in da club" - nice weirdo neptunes beat but probably better with someone else's accapella over the top.)

- everyone keeps quoting that "fat kid love cake" line from "21 questions" like they're telling you some big secret and we didn't all notice it the first time. yes, yes, we laughed, but then we moved the fuck on! it's like some people can only absorb one stanza every three months.

- the album still gets better with every listen!

- the back and forths with ja rule are all on the 'completely impenetrable argument with your girlf/boyf which you foolishly try to explain to your friends like it made any fucking sense in the first place' tip. busta, why the fuck are you even involved?!

lumidee - never leave you (uh oh)

i don't like "get busy" much anymore - as lil missy suggests, listening to sean paul is often one long "why do you humans cry?" moment (looking at him is even more disturbing!) even when he's got the infectious hook. "never leave you" is probably as far away as it's possible to get while you're still on the diwali, in fact the best thing about it is the way everyone's favourite cutting edge riddim is stripped of its sometimes oppressive now-ness by lumidee's slightly amatuerish voice (separating it from wayne wonder's "no letting go" which is really good and touching too but that dude is slick!) and that sickly sweet melody.

so it gets that heartbreaking late-summer nostalgia thing going where it could be a lost commercial radio anthem from when i was thirteen instead of something that people self-consciously bump to in the nearest club that wouldn't let my badly-dressed ass in. i'm pretty glad it didn't come out when i was thirteen though, because i would have been too busy listening to suede or something. everybody wins!

pop news update

alesha from mis-teeq (the one who originally wanted to be a p.e. teacher) says the garage scene has "fizzled out" and that she was unhappy with the scandalous remixes:



i had another quote about how bangin the remixes for the new single are but somebody nicked my copy of inpress.

jay-z and beyonce





in suffolk! ok maybe not in suffolk. but they're getting married! and beyonce's new song is pretty good.

pharrell ft jay-z - frontin



it's kind of like beautiful part two but, up until the jay-z part, the liquid guitar arrangement is like the most private kind of sentimental moment which you can't really share with anyone because they will know you are a lamer! for serious, it sounds like pharrell would be the most annoying, simpering boyf who is always too quick to cry and too quick to reveal his feelings. of course he's a successful dude so he won't have to regret this record later like i would undoubtedly regret spilling this type of shit to anyone. never show weakness!

in another very real way i haven't even listened to the lyrics properly yet, the song is called "frontin" for fucksake, so i've probably got it all wrong. the jay-z part gets this sinister bassline, an old nerd trick which always comes off like "haha you think it's so cool to be the awkward motherfucker who grew up listening to soul in my bedroom so i could make all these tracks sound so effortless - fuck that, it was the dark side!". this part isn't as good but it's still probably my favourite song of the year.

linkin park - faint



this song kind of fits in with "stop sign"! and tatu's "not gonna get us"! but also with this ace av8 bollywood breaks thing i found the other day. is it a healthy climate when all this disparate stuff could be seamlessly mixed? yes, it probably is! "faint" is linkin park with guns blazing (guns with bullets made of shouting and bulging neck veins and angst), a brilliant corny-ass indian string loop adding enough to the formula to make it all hyped and swinging. plus, for the last time, mike shinoda is one of the best mcs around at the moment! the whole of meteora is beginning to sound amazing now that i've got past the crushingly familiar chord progressions.

obviously this rvw was only posted to show that linkin park are permanent residents at hotel spizzazzz!

abs - stop sign

abs starts it off soul-crooner style, backed by shitty fuzz guitar and reverse handclaps or something. then comes the funky breakbeat. then the girls are going "nah nah nah" and the chords are doing that motown thing like where you put your hands near your knees and bring them up with the beat till they're reaching into the air, except abs is probably just pulling that weirdly ott sly grin and watching his lady dancers and not reaching into the air at all, the fuck! the chorus works but it's still perhaps the weakest link. it doesn't matter because after the second one you get this breakdown: abs raps a few lines sounding like wildchild or maybe like whenever there's a rap bit in any new jack swing tune; a catchy-as-fuck ringtone melody comes in (um, why doesn't the song start with the best bit abs, you mentalhead!), the beat disappears, abs strains because, like, he needs you baby, and it sounds completely amazing! there's only fifty seconds after that to bring it home, but i am so won over by the breakdown that these are the greatest fifty seconds of music that will ever be released.

from what i've seen of the video, it features disembodied legs and fly girls doing that digitally enhanced 'hummingbird-ass' dance perenially popular in the best clubs. it looks quite expensive!

dizzee rascal - fix up look sharp

it's... it's... the big beat

:-o

talib kweli - get by


the new rawkus mix cd is mostly concerned with putting all those mcs who were exciting years ago (mos, talib, skillz, monch) over nearly brand new beats like "in da club" and that neptunes common shit to see how they measure up or to offer a very slightly alternate vision of what could be on the radio instead of 50 (it turns out it would be almost exactly the same! although there is no one on the radio as outrageously annoying as skillz). westwood had the rawkus chairmen types on the other week, they're fucking boring but westwood made an interesting comment: he claimed he wasn't sure in 97/98 if mainstream rap was gonna go the way of jay z or rawkus. i can't remember whether there is any truth to this, i think at the time i was just getting whatever shit that came into (shudder) happy vibes records and had absolutely no quality control or sense of what was bigtime. i do think rawkus has been running with this parallel radio universe thing for a while though, perhaps since it 'lost' to jigga, which at least makes it more ambitious and sometimes fun than umpteen million undie labels.

kweli follows through bringing kanye west on production for "get by" - dude is a fucking genius! for serious, i don't think we even know yet how important the blueprint was by giving kanye and just blaze a good rep; the two of them are sucking up everything that came before and throwing out new beat templates on a weekly basis. blaze is currently on a fast+heavy early-nineties-funk-hop tip with that joe budden song and the new memphis bleek single ("everything's a go" check it out!). kanye is doing all sorts of shit but "get by" is one of those really perfect soul beats where you don't know how he's making everything fit together so nicely. it's like how a live band should sound but never, ever does!

there's also this catchy shout along chorus with backing singers and hand claps and they're going: "this morning, i woke up / feeling brand new and i jumped up / feeling my highs and my lows / in my soul, and my goals / just to stop smoking, and stop drinking". i was really seriously considering giving up smoking recently. i still am trying to cut down, but when i hear "get by" it makes me want to light up just to piss kweli off! that's really my problem though. dude can't help but be positive and preachy. i still sing along! and i still think this is my favourite song at the moment.

diplomats - dipset anthem



watch how the gangstas do it! i chickened out today and got this on 12 instead of the ridiculous 4lp diplomats 'mixtape' and now i feel dumb cuz i was like, hmm this song is kind of boring and the guardian (!) said only the beats are good so i'll get the 12 with the instrumental. fuck that shit, cam'ron and his cronies are keeping amazing and unbelievably boring rap alive in 03 so it's no good just having the beats - you have to feel the deadness of their go-nowhere verses with it, you have to feel the evil.

i'm trying to work out why i'm so into it but it's tough, i mean they always have these perfect soul and rock loops and their producers will probably one day be recognized as eye-wateringly good (also they appear to be running parallel with those djs like z trip and shred ted who are putting out mixtapes which try to make some sense of the awful rock music they grew up with - its better when kanye west or the heatmakerz condense this stuff down to the choicest loops instead of running a whole journey track over electro beats), but a lot of diplomats affiliated stuff is slow to reveal its purpose: too sluggish to be club tracks, choruses not good enough to get on the radio, into-the-void verses which barely make sense but just have a few lines aggro enough to keep you coming back.

so i'm thinking this is all about grabbing your attention for thirty seconds with this overwhelming digital sludge sound and seeing how long they can keep your head under. i told you it's evil but it's so much fun!

room five - make luv

i don't understand why this has been number one for three weeks, it's ok but every time i hear it i start to feel some genuine hate now. why wasn't mario number one last week you fuckers!

kym marsh - make you cry

is she on coronation street or something?

50 cent - in the club

50 has flooded the fucking market, too many mix cds, too many bootleg 12s filling up my local rap shop - there's some good tunes on some of them but i think it might be a dangerous game. this could become the new blueprint for launching any rapper when it used to be like 'put out one official 12 on the downlow and get him on every dj clue mix for six months'. the volume of it all is tiring if you actually care and don't want to miss out on some potential good stuff; i wonder if many people actually have all those mix cds??

junior senior - move yr feet

providing an instant sunny antidote to pasty gareth gates malaise! ive warmed to the stuttery verses a lot since i first heard it.

the unknown song

what? hmm, i was looking out the window and now spizzazzz is looking at me pointedly but i don't know the answer. it sounded guitary and earnest?

gareth gates - spirit in the sky

urgh, this has the worst sound ever so i'm going to get some water.

mis teeq - scandalous

that 8,000 word review i did of this was awful but i have decided the song is awful too so fuck it! (ukg mix is still good but of course that would only get played on 1xtra now that radio one only plays bad-ass ballads.)

j-lo ft ll cool j - all i have

ok i am very ashamed to admit that i downloaded this song and listened to it and enjoyed it quite a lot. they make a repulsive couple and yet i was singing it at work last week, ll is especially fun to imitate with his breathy 'hi don't believe's. e crunk is telling me to embrace the ickiness of this song but its hard cos i keep thinking of ll's moustache.

delta goodrem - i forget

i stopped watching neighbours in 00 but i often regret it, it's just like when billy and anne left i feel the show lost it's heart. i know this is a bit i love 1993 but i would like to point out that the episode where jim and doug take magic mushrooms in the woods has not been forgotten by the nation's youth, it's the kind of thing you can start a conversation about in the pub with anyone! i would also like to mention that lil missy has been obsessed with karl kennedy since forever! i dunno who the fuck delta goodrem is or was in neighbours so fuck her and her so called music!

avril lavigne - i'm with you

in this song avril reminds me of a cross between my sister and the corrs. i feel a similar way about avril as i do about my sis - she's annoying but still ok. the sisterly love cancels out corrs hate.

westlife - 2nite

oh westlife. how i love you and your ballads and you're sitting on stools and you're tight-but-not-too-tight-jeans and your impassioned, ugly-ass faces and your atomic kitten girlfriends and your reverb-and-crying-guitar-and-punchy-piano production and brian dude who doesn't give a fuck and is actually just like my brother and kian who got beaten up and the effeminate one with black hair and the one who normally sings lead and looks like he has never, ever been sincere about anything in his life and the other one who i dont remember but probably he wears a big coat with a furry collar and is a date-rapist and now i love your bon jovi circa 95 direction!

erasure was number 14 but it was so bad that it fucked blogger up, erasure sing like don williams who was this dude we had to sing along to in primary school, he had a song about the environment called 'rip rip wood chip'.

atomic kitten - love doesn't have to hurt

boring but cloying

(e crunk notes: they are mingers!)

simply red - sunrise

this sounds like some kind of pisstake but is also the greatest song ever cuz i was dying earlier to hear "i can't go for that" and well fuck, here's the beat! good enuff for me. omg now some electroclash chantuese is doing the "you got the body" part in distorted style!

top fifteen um... spizzazzz chart

scooter - the weekend

scooter dude just sounds like a football commentator, shit is wearing thin even if the whole idea is that all the songs are versions on this amazing perfected concept of dreamscape tapes + bizzare historical imagery + weird dudes shouting at you till you give in and buy their single.

if you got a twenty dollar bill put ya hands up!

de la soul ft sean paul - shoomp

i love fluttery widescreen bird noise keyboard washes but when i hear them its normally in the context of some shitty chillout act on annie nightingale. de la or whoever produced this have used them as an atmospheric backdrop for bleep-dancehall drums and doo wop backing vocals (hey, guess what they're singing!) and sean paul doing his quickly-tiring sean paul thing! that almost means de la are cool again!

i never stopped feeling them really, stakes is high was a key record when i was fifteen and the summer was mad hot so all we could do was laze around and listen to de la and beats rhymes & life and 2000 by grand puba and smoke and blah blah. it kind of annoys me now though, teenagehood is meant to be a full-impact emotional rollercoaster and i was listening to all this music by dudes who already sounded tired of everything! i think stakes was de la trying to be angry with the state of hiphop but mostly they just sounded sad, like they wanted hiphop out of their face so they could relax and make cute vs edgy soundclash records like "shoomp". which is what they've done since and that's fair enough!

its still nice to hear their voices even if they're not saying much worth quoting. it's still nice, if not especially productive, to have that de la fug around, but i think it's going to take me putting on eve to actually get up out of this chair and do something.

out this week: india.arie - little things


it's all breezy, soulful yet understated grooves and india hates (well ok hate is too strong a word to describe her tepid chicken soup for the soulisms) "glitter and gold" which maybe explains why her music is so dull. it's like 'my favourite things' off the sound of music but with much less cool stuff than raindrops on roses.

out this week: eve - satisfaction


this doesn't start out promising - dre's snare/clap/blcha is mad annoying! it's like a few recent dre beats (that one off the eminem show at least) where the beginning seems to take all the funk out of a decent funk sample, or all the forward motion out of all rap ever (more extreme even than when he was pushing that sound on chronic 01) and you're left wondering how the fuck you're going to dance to this. but oh, eve! i could pick almost any part but this is my favourite: "most dudes is okay, half of the rest ain't / talkin bout what they wanna do, reality they can't / ask 'em what they life worth, watch 'em draw a blank / i really ain't got no interest if it don't involve the bank", it's all nasty! but the little pregnant pauses are even more fuck-you-i'm-big-time-and-you're-not attitude, like "i'ma give you what you want, what you waitin' for? / make the music that the people can't ignore ( .... )" <--- *fuckyouface*. then she starts switching between rapping and a creamy singing style which kills me even more!

it's the jay-z rmx of panjabi mc!

jay takes the enterprising-dj-middleman out of the bhangra/rap soundclash scene and drops a nice verse - worth a listen even if you are incredibly bored of "mundian to bach ke".

(while we're on the secret d/l tip, this is the neptunes blowing their 'we-rilly-rilly-like-criminal-minded' cover with the 'crazy' dude from the clipse album.)

sugababes - shape



sugababes have set themselves up in such a way that the only thing which could compromise their songs is if they changed those amazingly clear and and pretty voices. they sound unique to me, i don't think i hear other people on or off the radio singing with their precise and very english cadence, an actual viable alternative to the american soul template although it's not that different either, thank christ. heidi is more traditional than the other two but instead of weakening their uniqueness it has just made for a nice contrast - mutya and keisha will win the battle to be heard when all three are singing but heidi always makes her solo parts count.

anyway, i think this all means any kind of arrangement can go behind them without making me feel icky or like they have taken some horrible misstep, even a major sting acoustic guitar sample like the one on here is just patted down and made to sound beautiful! the only thing that bothers me is that this is like the hundred and second single off angels and the feeling that we should just shut up about them for a while in the hope that they record some new stuff!

more pop news

jay-z is once more tramp to beyonce's lady
conflicting spizzazzz versions! see i heard tonight on fox fm that bonnie and clyde ride together again: they were spotted in a restaurant eating off eachother's plates. which is nice.

the strokes
ryan from whizzkid management reports in his for-the-fans update email that most of the strokes (except julian strangely) are beginning to act like primadonnas! they have their management staff running their mundane and probably slightly malodorous errands for them:
"....you know, like running nick's laundry to the
cleaner....washing fab's dirty dishes that he leaves in our kitchen
sink, installing albert's stereo in his new apartment"

the new album will be out "SOMETIME IN LATE AUGUST or SEPTEMBER 2003......we'll see!". (poor ryan probly gets a lot of "WHEN?!" emails.) i have a feeling it's gonna be good.

australian murder inc. update
ja rule was um livin' it up this weekend on his tour here with ashanti and irv (but sadly no charli baltimore, but we forgive her for being busy finishing her album.) - he was on a massive roll at crown casino and was signing autographs on $50 notes and eventually extended his stay an extra 24hrs, possibly indicating he is addicted to gambling maybe. my friend's sister met him and she said he was very short and very cute like some kind of woodland creature. she didn't take her top off for him tho unlike ~40% of girls in melbourne. at that same 'tops off rule' after party ja's minders made the dj take 'in da club' off the turntable - i thought he wanted to end his beef with 50!

1xtra biggie tribute mix

(i am always slightly disappointed in 1xtra's hiphop shows - there's never any sense of freewheeling pirate-style broadcast or bedroom mixtape or "block party" or whatthefuckever injecting some humanity into brit-hop records or second-string commercial tunes with real live dj context - its all super-professional. but with this mix it doesn't matter, it's all biggie (plus acapella blends with other tunes) so it's an hour well spent!)

nas - i can

i don't think this is nearly as bad as missy says, even if it is plagued by nas lamer disease, making dudes cringe since 1991 - but thats just the way he is, the bargain you have to accept to get something from his occasional top drawer performances. i like the way he gravelizes and ages his voice here, it gives a bit of character distance to his preaching, perhaps making it more playful and fun than it otherwise would have been for people who don't like to be relentlessly talked at. if you haven't sung along with the kids in the chorus you are missing out!

having said that, there was another, far superior record using the same classic drum break as "i can" on the radio today which put nas to shame: it was "heaven is a halfpipe" and it made my day.

christina aguilera - beautiful

ok so there are a lot of banging house remixes of xtina's beautiful as referred to earlier by e crunk but the one you want is the peter rauhofer mix (which is actually not very banging at all, it's kind of subdued and um proggy). he is some german dude who isn't paul van dyk... (oh wow i just read his entry in amg and he's austrian and he has a grammy!) i should probly admit at this point that i don't own any fluffy white bras but this mix almost makes me want to buy a set in different pastel colours! i think i decided to like this remix to make up for the fact that i never liked the original. but it is better! it gives xtina so much more space to be beautiful. there are dark dramatic strings and panicky echoing bass drums for the verses where xtina can't breathe and bright triumphant synths for the chorus (but there's still that sad undertow so you know she's only just got it together). so yeah, i don't know who linda perry is either (amg edit: omg she was in 4 non blondes!) but for this song rauhofer wins.

some singles out this week

ja rule ft ashanti - "mesmerize"

eight million times better and sweeter than "always on time", probably not as good as the "i'm real" rmx but few things are - it's ja rule and he's back only this time slightly less successful! so lots of dickheads can crow in music magazines about how he was never any good and posit his downturn in sales as 'proof'. motherfucker still sells more than your fave band! anyway, up until six months ago i didn't much like his stuff apart from "holla" so i'm not ready to give up on the dude yet! the video is wicked.

richard x/liberty x - "being nobody"

this fits almost disturbingly well into the liberty x thing but i can't really decide what the thing is! like, is it as simple as "omg look i can open up my chest and there's wires and shit inside!" cyborg sex? whatever it is, judging from every performance ever (even injecting some cold-steel singing and implied harsh facial expressions into their ballads), lx take it fucking seriously! it's not... a fuckin... game!! there's a shit faux-dancehall rmx on the b side, but buy it anyway!

linkin park - "somewhere i belong"

if this week's singles were from march 01 or even 02 it would be the greatest week in the history of anything, but dude it's 03, you can't keep up this shit forever, one day even spizzazzz will tire of scratching over enormous, predictable chord progressions and shirts with lots of buttons. one day. not quite today, i mean i still bought the 7" of this! i like the way singing dude starts every line for rapping dude to finish; i like the way i went red (possibly embarrassed on behalf of everyone who ever liked nu-metal) hearing the chorus for the first time, such is it's self-parodic obviousness (as with everything lp do, they won't just open the door to self-parody, they will, like the dudes in whatever tv ad that was, sprint into multiple walls and jump over a huge ravine to grab it); i dislike the overall sound which is really frustrating because that indestructable formula is still there!

n*e*r*d - "provider"

yes of course, a zero 7 rmx will be far more successful than, hmm, a neptunes rmx! ok ok it's aight. also, decent twitchy electro mix of "lapdance" on the flip. "re-recorded with live instruments" is still the worst idea anyone has ever had and will not be forgotten anytime soon.