crazy double time flows of reggae music pt3

crazy double time flows of reggae music pt1



everyone's doing it now

nivea - breathe (let it go)



hypergloss intro, pro-toolsish acoustic guitar, piano, moogy synth - now listen, any uk-ist who secretly pines for the mid nineties is going to recognize the similarity to gabrielle & east 17's astoundingly classic "if you ever". but this kind of rip is easy to respect coz even moreso than it's forbear, the arrangement and instrumentation is just so. ahhh. relax. you are in the hands of professional rnbists. they can drop a sumptuous, thought-provoking semi-ballad while you're in the toilet. relax. now listen to what the fuck nivea has to say! "even kodak couldn't fix this picture / you can take this as a lesson learn / kinda like usher u gotta let that shit burn" she is regretting some dude leaving, tho i am baffled as to why he left beyond vague talk of not appreciating him til it was too late. maybe this dilly-dallying vagueness was the reason he got out, niv!

(first verse and chorus directed towards absent 'him', second verse directed towards female audience as if niv has tired of internalizing her regret and suddenly longs to atone in a positive way.)

you might also have spotted the meta-crazy "burn" ref: every 05 rnb album must have its burn moment; i ain't going to say usher's tune was strikingly original, it's more like it reached such a exquisitely rarified pitch for danceable slow jams (think hard drums, regretfulness, lush swirly atmospherics, wordy verses, MASSIVE POPULARITY) that it has forced its way into being a feather in every rnb singer's bow. why the fuck would you NOT have a burn moment?? and whether niv has played me with her powers of suggestion or dazzled with her knowingness, "breathe" is by far my favourite 05 burn moment.




(having said that i'm feeling "we belong together" more each day!)

general b - many gal

mmmmmm hm!!!



man i know he looks shy but "many gal" is a crazy crazy crazy reminder of why you loved mc acrobatics in the first place. mumble-mouthed (tho technically brill) people caressing a mic and hitting supernaturally perfect phrasing every line just cos its possible and cos there is an audience who will adore it and cos there is a tuff beat to facilitate their gangsta! support general b.

sticky ft jason jermaine - something good

fucking hell it is hot. i just read that sticky first tried his hand at ukg with the rmx of (now 1xtra dj) nesha's "what's it gonna be" after they made the rnb version together. common sense tells us it's fucking tough to make beats for a long time and still be the exhuberant graf dude with a swag bag of sprays and a gigantic plain wall in front of you, but i swear even with all them bizarre comedy records and endless recycling, sticky still got some kind of beautiful ukg magic! usually when he reaches for greatness, as with for instance joy's "beggin" or slk's "hype hype" (good tune made amazing by crazy energetic vocal performances MAYBE THE BEST I EVER HEARD! get lost with your dystopian wonder rmx), it's about sticky's melodic rainbow world serving a hot vocal.

j jermaine on "something good" is going for a kinda golden age c david level of moreish fem virility, also i am reminded of kevin lyttle's 'yeah i'm a man - A MAN WHO'S ALL TINGLY tee hee hee' vibe on "turn me on", cool! for all that, "something good" has it's own special alchemy in the way it connects youngstar style kick'n'clap flurry with salsa patter; ricky martin would love this shit. sticky's magic is i guess to make you forget the mechanics and feel the rainbow rush.


OH YEAH LOOK OUT FOR THE SPIZZAZZZ TOP TEN R'N'G RECORDS COMING SOON

korn ft xzibit - fight the power

elvis was a hero to most but he elvis was a hero to most but he elvis was a hero to most but he



ahhh remember them days when the world was real? honestly i thought everything was different-shaped now but listen: a hot new system of a down song on the radio, three six mafia busting double-kickdrum powerful-calfed vinnie paul patterns on the spizzong to ur left, and lil jon producing korn and xzibit on a cover of "fight the power" for the new xxx movie ! crazy. it's like lil missy just said to me, 'i don't even know who these people are!'

i can't really do it justice so i'll just break some things down:

- lil jon gets his own hysterical-synthed intro and then NOTHING ELSE apart from trademark vaguely spacey electro drums for the verses

- which segues into big bad krashing korn drums for the chorus!

- the spizzazzz-endorsed fav korn video is probly that "blind" one where the song ends and they break into some hot nu metal beat, just playing it relentlessly in their dingy squat with the huge korn banner behind them, no doubt the only non-musical posession they had at the time, BECAUSE THAT'S WHAT NU METAL DUDES DO!!!



- but the one we still see all the time is that shit where there's bullet holes everywhere so jonathan 'korn' davis blows on a bullet to trigger the hot percussive-bass breakdown



- i hate xzibit! well ok "bitch please" was good one million years ago but his current mtv omnipresence grates no end! jack cable mysteriously loves that wack "hey now" song

- oh yeah, "fight the power"! x and j davis share the verses, passing the mic in racially harmonious fashion - x probly sounds best but then j davis gets nearly the whole chorus so call it a draw on the battlefield with lil jon, as ever, secretly winning the war

- and i'm done

50 cent / tony yayo - i run ny



(recent new york dudes falling out stories have been boring but styles p's response was good where he was like, erm i better stay out of it as i'm on interscope too and 50's bigger than me! spoken like a true second most popular member of the lox! i wonder if sheek louch could be even more pragmatic)

inevitably (rightly!) there's not much talk about the beats on dis songs, tho by nature they are the hardest and most purposeful you'll hear on a rap show right now. and if you listen to rap shows a lot you're gonna hear them all the f-ing time! let's look at the recent 50 dis sequence: "piggy bank" was a bit useless but the awesome opening strings, the distortosynth and general clatteringness won me over; jada's reply had a sleazy funk-rock gallop (he is v good at dis songs coz hypnotically never altering your rhyme scheme is good for long verses!) and fat joe busted over a super-dramatic string loop.

all deadly functional and carefully chosen for once; no need for a wack timbaland beat or whatev tho maybe because big producers are afraid to tie themselves to disses. and now the "i run ny" beat (originally mobb deep's "cobra" ahh nobody cares coz they're not glamourous): horrendous saw slicing thru metal noise, palm-muted guitar, controlled-explosion drum track - a release from dull producers endlessly recreating real-band dynamics of melodic lead instrument plus drums and bass. bands don't have a saw! well maybe rammstein does or something but you know wot i mean. this is my fav beat for ages.

1, 2 brap



or: 1, 2 dexplicit; c-oh-lder; eski-oh; b-oh; baddies; griairam

ciara ft ludacris - oh (spizz blend one)

ciara ft ludacris - oh (spizz blend two)

we haven't had a pic on spizzazzz since mad cobra?!

so here's babygirl ciara drawing a magic o.

sleazy dance motherfuckers

you know what i'm talking about! videos sprung from the juggernaut success of "call on me": michael gray - "weekend", sunset strippers - "falling stars", kabin kkkru - "star to fall", studio b - "i see girls", max graham - "owner of a lonely heart", even "my my my" by my man armand! (where are the ghetto mandivas??). plus at least a few more. they all feature roughly the same cheap-looking film stock/dv processing, the same speedup/slowdown fx offering a respectable real-music-vid sheen to endless tit-jiggling shots, the same vaguely fashionable-haired women in flight attendant/secretary/undefined glamour model roles. all have the traditional british bawdy-humour getout clause. just a bit of fun! WE LOVE IT etc

are these all from the same director/company? ministry of sound? i dunno.

the "owner of a lonely heart" clip is interesting as meta-critique of this whole sequence of vids: two barely secondary skool-kids put up ad for ladies in bikinis to come audition for them (for some reason - i can't remember if it's explained!) after they see bikini'd mannequin in shop window; bikini bitches, delighted at opportunity, dance for them in mysterious audition room; kids get picked up afterwards by mum and share cheeky we-got-away-with-it look when asked what they've been up to.

these kids are clearly the perpetually juvenile dance twats behind the scenes, forever cheekily getting away with their wearying extreme objectification. arse-pinching their way right back to innocence. this i spose is what nuts magazine is like.

it's also wack because "weekend" and "my my my" are amazing songs. and twenty wonky-faced actually-singing trance ladies just got put the fuck out of work.

mary j blige - mvp / cassidy ft mary j blige - i'm a hustla rmx

ok sometimes i think it's endless industry complacency and a probable network of grizzled old-timer djs with their hiphop-soul 90s glory days that allows mjb to instantly get buzz for stuff like this, but it's also coz she actually bothers innit. mary bothers to make the connections and bothers to love (in the case of "mvp") "hate it or love it" enuff so she can spin it full of r'n'b goodness and bothers to make bold choices - come on, you never thought she was gonna be on the "hustla" rmx! it hasn't just got pretend hard drums like "lose my breath"! and it's a bold choice that comes off too; there's a back and forth type section with cassidy that is just like, yeaaaahhhh i should have known she would kill it like this! (also swizz refs his early o.t.t. programming with a one-bar doubletime flurry like wot he used to do on every song ever, cool!) sorry i doubted.

evans ft pusha t - goin out

oh faith, if anyone should get out of the bleeding house it's you. doo doo doo-doo doo-dooooo. me and my girls are goin out tonight / me and my girls are goin out tonight. a fabolous song to sing along to but i'm always singing girl-specific songs! where is the man-track i can put my heart into?

so, songwriting mechanics! "goin out" has that fing where you have a cool little one-or-two bar motif, if you run it over one bumping never-changing uber-chord then it's always hot, but if you hit it over pharrell-caressed descending / ascending chords it kind of moistens and makes the one-chord bump you just heard seem strangely poignant. an easy trick but so effective, especially for updated latin freestyle splurts as sticky-sweet as on "goin out", in fact it is probably the least miniature neptunes track for ages; i like "drop it" etc ok* but i feel rigorous questions must be asked of anyone poiposely lo fidelitizing their sound - like what reason is there not to make it sound as big as possible / why must you hate / plz don't reinvent weedsmoke boombap for the mid-00s! sorry that last one isn't a question.

and that brings us back to faith! because when not being real on ballads she has consistently killed it over hard r'n'b tracks with proper low-end ("love like this" "burning up" "you gets no love" loads of rmxs etc). it seems fair to credit her with saving the neps from their lame selves! also from her own personal drug hell so she can go out again and stuff.

*ahhh god i just remembered that "tit 4 tat" one though! terrible.

nail.



man what an amazingly real song "ain't no doubt" was, the verses were word-hop like an angry "dry your eyes" and everyone would do that knocky knocky gesture during the chorus, though lil missy claims she has done forgotten. j nail had a missing front tooth in the video and treated it all like a weird method acting exercise! oh and the drums were kinda big, honest.

i don't want nobody else, i luv u

SHE'S LYIN!





(erm hurry up r them co with your epic dancehall post!)

spizzazzz rvws some chart songs part one

shapeshifters - back to basics

i wish things would stop going back to basics! just like "lola's theme" this shit is blighted with weak drums, i don't get who's meant to be impressed with ultra-smooth anti-bjaxx patterns unless they care more about what mj cole thinks than your edgy drum pattern loving wo/man on the street! we didn't cut off mike pickering's head and parade it thru the streets only for this to happen! the m in m people stands for murderation.

phantom planet - california

so i've totally gone off the oc lately coz, well, ahhh so many reasons!

- it's not funny any fucking more! seth's quips all reference a previous seth quip, and everyone else's quips reference a seth quip too! haha yes very meta and everything but so tired!

- marissa's fucking arms, just put them away you weird alcoholic gazelle! it's crazy coz they are probably the thinnest, longest arms on tv but in smallville they have recently allowed fat-armed chloe to show her fat arms (not in reality fat arms, but fat tv arms), so american tv: finally celebrating diversity hurrah.

- plot contrivance taken to the xxxxxxxxtreme, no no no not another girl's night out which leads to another boys night out which leads to another parents dinner, fuck you!

erasure - whatthefuckever

fair or not, i blame rachel stevens for this wackness.

the faders - no sleep tonight

man i love this song, all those different parts and vocal fx and then a flange/phase on the guitar and drums and then that stop start solo, it's like a testament to the awesome power of pro tools. i was gonna pad this out with some lyrics but they're all exquisitely boring, oh well!

jem - they

so easy to be uncharitable when you hear something that's kinda a dour version of another amazing song (sugababes "overload"?) but "they" is pleasant and if you hate pleasantness then you are probably a twat. triangles are still cool.

natalie umbruglia - sorry i don't know what this is called

lil missy will tell you she hates n umbruglia for some arcane reason like she stole the lead singer of silverchair or brad from neighbours away from her but it's actually coz missy wrote "torn" and didn't get no credit. anyway fucking hell i'm completely indifferent to her! i thought this would be the best chart for ages coz of mario, christ i love "let me love u"!

50 cent - candy shop

aight a while ago i had long, impassioned defence of "candy shop" i was gonna post but i sorta forgot it now. i do think it is deep tho, deep like there's all this space the beat creates which normally happens in minimal house type records or something - an exact balance going on between the pitch and the reverb that stops it from sounding slowed down but keeps it low and deep and spacey and real and all those words. amazing clarity of sound plus more of 50's tiny hooks. maybe not on the 02/03 level but still so fucking catchy! "girl what we do / and where we do / the things we do / stays between me and you", ahh so great. still, i hear this song is apparently about sex! oh my poor twatty patronizing ears.

tony christie - is this the way to amarillo

fuck this shit for stopping mario!

mario - let me love u (one drop reggae rmx)

this was on spizzongs for about six months but let me just reiterate: this is the greatest one drop remix ever! it should have two drops, one for each of your disbelieving ears. so wholesome sunday afternoon reading the observer and listening to roots radio, and so sinister when mario drops that jarringly harsh first line ("do you enjoy being hurt?") (it is kinda sinister on the og version anyway.) (mario is so real.)

amerie ft fabolous/juelz santana/gravy/royce the 5'9/peedi crakk - one thing (spizzazzz many men edit)

so there's this song called "one thing", oh christ i'm boring myself already errr this is the exclusive spizz mix with all the guest verses because like the og doesn't need no guest verse but we can't help being curious what peedi done does with the beat! so now you can purify the original but still have some larks. (life probably would have marched on if i never heard the gravy version but it turns out to be my... fourth favourite.) i dunno download this because you love my silky editing.

also if you hear any proper guest verses not featured here (not that jay-z one coz it's off some old song innit??) send em to us so we can add them!

random bizarre destinys child pic found while 'researching' the mini cowboy hat controversy which could tear spizzazzz apart!

brooke! valentine! album! (part one)

- i knew someone at school called brooke, she was a bit of a knob really. the first song on her album is the single "girlfight", i was excited by this coz lil jon is best doing these endless two-chord doomy repetitions, unforgiving and suddenly hitting you in the gut after three hours (my fave is still "damn"), but listening now it's quite a useless song. i hate big boi.

- "taste of dis" is kinda like when just blaze used his newfound industry power to do crunchy hiphouse tracks, the one with rah digga that was terrible but then also that joe budden/busta one which was aight. just blaze is a fucking weirdo! rah digga and joe budden's careers were ruined after those singles! b valentine's hiphouse track is really heavy though, as her website sez: 'valentine delivers the kinetic energy and seduction that listeners will immediately grasp. amid syncopated beats she encourages women to celebrate their sex appeal and tap into their inner diva.'

- the third song has the camp lo "luchini" horn loop, about as novel as choosing to eat food off a plate, everyone samples it these days. i think even jill scott and some drum'n'bass dudes? who will dare sample "black nostaljack"?? but! this is solid r'n'b realness with a whispery floaty breakdown.

- attention fantastic pop brigade: the fourth song is called "blah blah blah". the beat is a proper re-recorded "sweet dreams my la ex" and it features odb! now run along you scamps!

- it also says on her website that 200+ songs were recorded for this album! b valentine: the lost tapes will last forfuckingever! anyway "ghetto superstarz" is another fast song, with the sequenced drum style that you only get on non-thug ladyalbums, they try to be so perfect but they're just too piss-weak vanilla to belong to any actual genre of music! and usually they are fun too. you know, like "get this party started"? actually this song is very much like 02 pink and ends with a long 'in character' monologue, i think it is a satirical thing about how some girls are insecure, particularly in the music industry.

- "i want you dead" is another comedy satirical song. this album is bizarre!

man i love that mini cowboy hat!

why must there be hate??

it's swizz beatz day on spizzazzz

bcoz we found the compilation listed to your left (look over there now) (see?) and it is inevitably amazing. i had forgotten that lox track ("who do you expect") from dj clue backstage, incidentally the best official release dj vanity mixtape i ever heard, someone should make a list in fact! (dj vanity would be a cool name for a reggae dj.)

oh look they didn't even put "banned from tv" on there, lame.

xscape - wassup

look xscape if you are going to sample what, planet rock? debbie deb? for your comeback after a lot of years then why be all coy?? there is a purposeful vinyl-crackle home-listening vibe to this record when it could be a big time smash to drop right after "1, 2 step" and then maybe segue into a boring electro set or an amazing girls singing over 140bpm set where u can play "my boo" and "swing my way"! in fact i kind-of want to know the exact numbers it cost to clear the samples vs. what jazze and/or lil jon are charging for a hot nu electro beat. (or the genius craftsmen in-house slip n slide type people paid to sound like big-name producers.) i don't think it makes econosense.

i suppose xscape must be like 40 now and they remember planet rock from when it came out? ciara probably doesn't even remember xscape! anyway this is still wicked just for being a good bpm, i think at the end of the day i only care about bpms anyway, fuck music.

fat joe - so much more

thematic intro setting up final name-based pun. reference to widely available biographical info leading silkily into expectations for forthcoming album. witty reference to notorious incident in subject's past. alias of subject used in chatty conversational tone suggesting easy familiarity. cursory description of music hingeing on key adjective. tenuously illustrative lyric quote. reference to tropes of subject's chosen genre and subject's adherence/disregard of said tropes. summation of position lightened with reference to unrelated topic. name-based pun.

let's look at ciara

coz she might be a ladyman!

...

(come off it, internet)



ghetto mousy glam-hoodie realness for the album cover, softened with that expensive lipstick and eyeshadow combo, a lil bit unambitious. the hi-class hoodie died a death already with those terry toweling juicy couture versions from 02 but we are feeling the lameness of the paintshop smudged background!



suspiciously nicely distressed tshirt sleeves bely hoodrat status. end of drawstring bow craning downwards like lil jon's claw finger. clawfinger were cool. ciara still shatters glass ceiling with gridiron shoulderpads! (shoulderpads not pictured.)

instantly reminded of:



the day britney invented crunknb.



that's not a dude! anywho, another thing about ciara, the dancehall/dirty pop physicalness - rnb as the most worthwhile athletic pursuit ever. even slowed down to a 70bpm steroid abuse metabolism grind on "oh" the shit is tiring to dance to! she will probably unleash an amazing routine for it as well. perhaps the reason ashanti never did a "1 2 step" type song.



i dunno wtf the idea was here though, she looks terrible!



and this is too twee, you can't even see the tartan wellies!

i've gone off this whole thing now. but here's a bizarre japanese bonus pic.



waaaaaaah, that's a different person!

CHECK LIL JON VS WESTWOOD REGGAE SOUNDCLASH LIVE ON RADIO ONE RIGHT NOW IT'S THE HOTTEST THING I EVER HEARD IN MY LIFE

you missed it!

we keep it gutter u should know



hi. i'm ciara, and i thought i'd tell you britain bought twenty one thousand copies of my debut single goodies! huuh haah! let me see u one two step!

(what's up with those feathery trousers? gross)






(i can feel the armlegging though)

fresh for 05

--- making "lose my breath" better

amazing soca version (destiny's beat with soca vocals and extended marching drums + soca whistles intro!!!) 'doing' the 'rounds' on 1xtra. but i dunno what it's called or if it's a blend or wot. it might be the hottest thing i've ever heard in my life. also there is the northwest allstars' inspirational double-time cut-up spazz version of the beat on "north weezy" ('why do we hate girls? they're sleazy!'???), those dudes are angry! more to come about them soon so we can do some kind of southside vs northwest face-off.

--- uk raphop

could be a breakout year for roots ma-... no wait i hate him! good uk rap remains as rare as i don't know the fuck what. but channel u fave "ey ey" by def 1 is disturbingly catchy hotness! check the video on this page.

--- amerie

"one thing" is so achingly sick (the best song of 04 and 05 except for "oh") i had to ration playing it in case it gets the world ubiquity vote by summer! and it had better otherwise it's your fault, jackass! rich lovecraft harrison and amerie still the j nicholson and h hunt of r'n'b.

--- clownstep

innit.

--- mid-nineties rnb revival

yeah you might reasonably suggest this happens every year but akon is the mid-ninetiesest dude ever. "locked up" is the kind of tune which made thugs shed a tear directly over their tear tattoo during the blossom ad break, and his newest single ("ghetto" with biggie no less) is like classic 96 stiff programming with all rhythmelodic friction coming from the (great) sample. it's wicked! let's all put on 112. NOW. (112 have a new crunk'n'b single as it happens.)

--- competent grime

grime so competent with the vocal tunes these days! i mean yeah there's always the peaks but the new craft-intensiveness makes shows like cameo - who killed it in 04 with his love for ladygirlgrime - a weekly decaf and a slice of toast late night pleasure. mmm pleasuring cameo. as the man himself remarked, it's the dj cameo in the fresh for the 2005 on the spizzazzz. don't sleep.

mario ft cassidy - 18


sometimes i listen to r'n'b radio shows and wonder how that weird swing sound got so prevelant, the jerky spazz bass headnod type sound. in v general terms, the drums are usually clompy super square kick-hat-snare-hat patterns but all the other sounds (like some guitar type noises and keyboards and bass) are gasping fractionally off the beat. i think this whole sound could have been developed from how people nod their heads! if, as in this kind of swing, there is a wider space where your melodic or bass element could hit on the snare and kick hits then it makes it easier for your hypothetical head to snap back satisfyingly. (your head movement does not match the decay of a kick or snare sound ie. the sound will already be gone by the time your head is back to it's regular position, unless you do that painful neck snapping, in which case you are a twat.)

you can hear different variations of it in jay dee-ish rap and probably other places but the soul version is weird because i don't think i ever heard it help a song out - sometimes it sounds like an unwilling concession to sequencing and electronics from dudes who want to play slap bass live for several hours and find on-beatness too inorganic, sometimes it is perfectly bearable, but has it ever made anything more danceable and/or fun? fucking no!

oh but listen, this kinda old mario song makes a valiant go of being fun, it's like he and his beatman actually believe in the spazzness and build the whole song around it! especially the extremely tight usher-baiting chorus: next time y'all underestimate me / recognize i just turned eighteen / that means i got seven years to catch up so what's up? huuh haah! the best get-out clause ever, split up jamesdeanbradfield-style with emphasis on wrong/unexpected sylables!

oh yeah remember if this post is rubbish i might be younger than you so get lost merry xmas!

gype clash

regional bedroom mc's wreck the new ridiculously sick gype riddim over the phone on daytime 1xtra, crazy! i think they are doing another round today, check it 3-5pm.

the chart is fifty per cent wack

the uk top 40: it used to be real. then it was somewhat less real. then i forgot to check for ages. so i wanted to decide scientifically how real the chart is at the moment, and to introduce a special yuletide hardline approach to realness, which will also apply to presents.

deep dish - flashdance: real
kelis - millionaire: real
beastie boys - open letter to nyc: fake
joss stone - right to be wrong: fake
khia - my neck my back (lick it): fake
paul holt - fifty grand for christmas: fake
blue - curtain falls: real
ash - renegade cavalcade: fake
shania twain - party for two: real
the corrs - long night: fake
brian wilson - good vibrations: fake
mcfly - room on the 4rd floor: real
mousse t - right about now: fake
maroon 5 - sunday morning: fake
michael gray - the weekend: real
jamelia - dj/stop: real
usher - confessions II/my boo: real
eric prydz - call on me: fake
u2 - vertigo: fake
babyshambles - killamangiro: real
geri - ride it: real
jay-z/linkin park - numb/encore: real
jojo - baby it's you: real
christina aguilera - car wash: fake
brian mcfadden - irish son: fake
3rd wish - obsession (si es amor): real
eminem - just lose it: real
uniting nations - out of touch: real
snoop dogg - drop it like it's hot: real
nelly - tilt ya head back: fake
gwen stefani - what you waiting for: real
natasha bedingfield - unwritten: fake
robbie williams - misunderstood: fake
green day - boulevard of broken dreams: real
lemar - if there's any justice: real
girls aloud - i'll stand by you: fake
destiny's child - lose my breath: fake
ice cube - you can do it: fake
kylie minogue - i believe in you: real
band aid 20 - do they know it's xmas: fake

wack.

destiny's child - girl

(there goes oppressive white man rob them co like he owns dancehall!)

this is my other favourite off the dc album, more wintery warm plaid and distant sparkle through your frosted r'n'b window. the whole album is so winter-specific it seems inevitable there will be another solo charge by summer - beyonce in the middle with unimpeachable powerful-thighed #1 anthem, michelle (who kills it on fulfilled) to one side with her gospel choir, kelly on the other with some bizarrely wrong-headed misstep that i will secretly love. oh kelly! on "girl" she has a mongy boyfriend who has ruined her self-esteem but b and m are there to offer choice words. they way they sing 'gir-ir-irl' in the chorus is so perfect, as are the pretty ascending strings at the end of every 8-bar and b's exacting amount of melismatic reach for her overdubs. i love dc.

sean paul - legalize it

- those spanish clicky clappy crab things like wot they have in school music rooms are cool (castanets??)

- i think i am totally starting to feel andre 3000 jaunty fake URRR CLOWNSTEP like the tracks on the g stefani lp and "millionaire". crazy! someone should legalize clownstep, never mind weed and nunchucks

- straining to hit notes is cool. sean paul has to strain for every note! sean paul is ghetto. legalize him

- lenky is cool, i look forward to his future riddims and his contributions to the lord of the rings: the return of the king extended edition dvd

'i don't normally like 'the' 'hiphop' but that ice cube tune is cracking!'



oh colin you're so witty and right!

destiny's child - if

a ballad which sounds as if still trapped in the torpor and sentimentality of immediate breakup blues but the lyrics are post survivor revelatory: if you think I caught a feeling when I heard about that other chick (no) / i already knew about it / i just needed time just to clear my mind and ask myself / (why I didn’t handle him). dc always surviving and never giving anything back! 'if' is ravishingly beautiful but it scares me like if this is what you think to yourself when you're gently reflecting then how unforgiving are you on the bus into town with your loud friends?? everyone will hear. i feel like i really did done do beyonce and michelle wrong (kelly wishes!), "playing around with them raggedy heffers" (i know wtf) and look, just stop surviving for five minutes so we can talk!

but all this isn't to say i can't relate, ok! it's also amazingly real because it's all well and good on shiny going-out anthems but to be steely even while wrapping up warm alone on a winter's night and reflecting is exactly what it takes to survive! probably?

it would be cool if "my neck my back" had been in the top ten for two-and-a-half years!

and also if khia was actually in the excessively sleazy video.

odb rip

once when i was fifteen i was at my friend carlos's house with all these older mc type dudes who had rhyme books. rhyme! books! i wasn't really in awe of them but they had better clothes and impress-me brithop attitudes which i found very intimidating! there was probably a couple of hours of dourly boring weedtalk before we all bonded spitting "brooklyn zoo" at each other, gunclapping at the "ch-ch bloaw!" parts, authentically stutter-wobbling our voices for "my hip hop drops on your head like ra-a-ain". i still can't think of a song which better communicates love of rap language, or convinces me more that there is a valuable and important understanding between worldwide rap dudes.

what the charts told us

cassidy's "get no better": not especially popular, bad video with cassidy somewhat overstating things by courting mashonda (i forget what she did, the r'n'b version of "damn!"?) in a courtyard, never heard it much on the radio; and yet it did just as well as everyone's fave spring anthem, "on fire" by l banks a few weeks ago, wtff?

what this tells us:

- british people l-o-v-e rap ballads. (we really fucking do! i think even ll's "paradise" did quite well)

- g-unit don't care that much about pushing singles anymore. (i dunno, maybe? they know they are gonna sell bare albums off the brand; the banks and buck singles don't sound that interested in converting people [like people wot throw piss at them at reading 'festival' or whatever] but yeah yeah why should they; i am still kinda hoping "let me in" will be all over radio because it's super nice but only two weeks till the release now!)

scratchscratchscratch! etc

the new dj rectangle cd is probably the best one this decade! and it has very few zzzzz dialogue samples! he still hasn't brought back the lateral thinking and big set-piece blends from 'ill rated' and 'vinyl combat' but that might be impossible in 04 anyway: too many drastically differing tempos (crazy when you think how many standard templates have been introduced since even 00, the stuff people [or at least trina!] must have at least one of on their album) when rectangle is midtempo bassline bump through and through*.

what he has kinda brought back is the nice second-string tunes life is otherwise too short to get into, like meth and snoop on "we some dogs" or whatever that silkk the shocker song is. stuff that barely even makes it onto real mixtapes. it's like foundation album-track rap, it's good 4 you but it takes some dude like rectangle to put it in the context of actually being fun. oh yeah his scratches and cuts are catchy as always too!

*having said this, six million dollar hand being so good probably suggests that midtempo bassline bump is have a really good year! probably in part bcoz of g-unit's blanket refusal to fuck with other tempos.

we love mastermind youth team

check them at the very end of this video, particularly the final dude with amazing sniper sight lock tekken hands!

christina milian - l.o.v.e.

so the released version of this song (the uk album version, dunno about elsewhere) is good but a bit weird, for one thing it features beardo freak joe budden threatening to 'take you to the 80s' but then the beat comes in and it's not what i think of as 80s at all, in fact it's really subdued - doomy descending bassline and drums from "the show" all drugged up with echo (oh right they did use echo in the 80s 4real) for no apparent reason, as unnecessary as milian's bizarrely dull mtv looky-likey show. however! there's also this other version from early promos which has loads of things going good:

- twinkly-sweet melody from the world's greatest synth xylophone, a super tuneful palette cleanser like those notes at the beginning of the scoobay riddim which have the effect of focusing you on the drums refreshed and renewed

- four hard kicks plus horn stabs like wot happens at the start of "party up"

- milian hiccupily matching the xylophone for the chorus

- the kicks matching milian's sylables when she goes 'l-o-v-e forever' (and just for that one bit she uses the #1 classic dirty pop phone call filter, cool!)

- proper milian middle-eight type section with a harp no less!

- bonus-beats break right after the middle-eight (suggesting promo-version-specific not bothering to put a guest verse in, cool!)

check the too real to be released version for yourself.

slow fucking til the crack of dawn



anyone know why lil missy's favourite song of 02 (and least autumnal song ever!) is back two years later with some awful remix all over the radio? it's very weird!

goldie lookin chain - guns don't kill etc

listening to people spit, anyone, even these knobs, is pretty interesting: the words they choose, the voices they choose, the space between lines, the jokes, the breath control, the emphasis, the intangible stuff. so much stuff going on to make me forget my hellish life! glc will always make the wrong choices (i guess that's the point?). their jokes are so full of hate that i can only wish a swift end to their career.

and yet! my ears perk up when they come on (this is the most-played rap record on radio 1 for like the past two months, thanks britain!) just because they rhyme instead of sing, and because there's lots of them to contrast off each other and hearing more than three mc's on a track is a bit more uncommon now and and and rap is really good no matter what it sounds like. so i think perhaps if you don't get something from listening to "guns don't kill etc" you probably hate rap.

ciara ft ludacris - oh

i dunno do you have to be a dude to inhabit the nate dogg role in a rap sub-genre? no one called him bubblegangsta! but bubblegum crunk is apparently what ciara and nss16 make, those vapid bitches huh guys! anyway i was feeling "goodies" about as much as rtc but "oh" is the real deal - fuzzy-warm bass grind not unlike trillville's "neva eva" but much slower, in fact slow enough to touch toes at the magic 70bpm mark (the realest tempo in music??). perfect for luda and for ciara's almost sing-chat style, so understated she's like the secretly brilliant yet shy member of xscape or someone suddenly busting out with her own style!

that's not funny!

i mean really.

estelle ft some dude - free

estelle! you've wasted your fairly decent slippery double-time flow on this maroon 5 live jam beat! how brit-hop of you! i heard a couple more new songs on t nelson last night and they are full-on construction-set r'n'b like, OH I DON'T KNOW LETS SAY FOR INSTANCE, ms dynamite. the best estelle verse is still her guest on 3sl's version of "touch me tease me" which she has no doubt disowned anyway!

(in other brit ladygirl rapper news, this is proper o!m!g! amazing... do nio next!)

the nelly albums

- the best thing about nelly is in his videos and tv appearances and singles and accessories he will always tweak your imagination enough so you believe something brilliant and amazing could happen, which must be as important as something brilliant and amazing actually happening. if people don't have that i will never get to the brillmazing bits because i will be playing ps2 or keying cars instead.

- the sweat and suit thing is a big ruse so nelly could release the most outrageously wet album rap has known. i mean r'n'b albums are normally 10x tuffer than suit, for instance the recent teedra moses record is full of space-ballads and synths that mop up the audio spectrum like crusty bread in your broccoli and stilton soup. and it would fuck nelly up!

- it is important to mention that suit is also amazingly brilliant!

- sweat is quite shit.

- in fact it's not really shit but they fucked up that c aguilera duet debuted at the vmas, boring one-chord funk vamping that sounds like it was recorded just after "lady marmalade" (what happened to rockwilder btw?) - that's a lifetime ago! i don't need this shit anymore and it makes me tired with life.

- i don't need the chest-beating impotent horns in zzzzzzzzz "heart of a champion" either.

- however! "american dream" and "getcha getcha" are two insanely tight st lunatics-featuring twinkly keyboard+hard drums anthems. st lunatics are wicked! also "flap your wings" gets even better with each successive month and now it's number one in the charts, mental! it sounded like number eight with a bullet.

- "playa" has the once-improbable line-up of nelly, missy and mobb deep and will probably win the aesthete div vote for being based around some shit 80s wanktro song. mobb deep's snugly fitting in with 04-hop is in some way depressing, like just as the ultimate symbol of how the east monged everything up this decade.

- and then there was suit!

- which begins with the one-two gentle palm caress of pharrell (electro drumkit and unpleasant keys flourish suddenly in second minute due to delicate nelly/pharrell interplay...mmm the gayness) and jazze pha (elastic-bassed like that twista "badunkadunk" song but better for having good t.i. and nelly verses - the closest track to "ride wit me"-style midtempo blissout).

- oh but then it's "my place" which is wack.

- "n dey say" is that spandau ballet song! "true"! and w/o even a chunky breakbeat on top like wot pm dawn had. it's audacious and lovely and probably why nelly wanted to release two albums in the first place.

- "woodgrain and leather wit a hole" is beautiful melancholy hypnoticness which breaks down in a bizarre double-time hand clap style. "over and over" and "nobody knows" are just as beautiful although they might become embarrassing by next week!

- so you better get suit quick fast.

another thing about n bedingfield

what's this shit where people* say 'golly gosh, aren't songs about writing songs/songs about writers block rubbish!' like a) the world was endlessly swamped with meta-songs and b) it was anything other than a twatty excuse not to engage with n bedingfield's amazing 04 anthem!

(in other news i had a dream where i was sat at the bedingfield family dinner table and mum bedingfield served the most foul food i had ever dream-tasted!)

*i may have made up these people as i can't remember where i saw it now

i had forgotten the westwood uk hip hop mix!

it was really impressively bad! but now he has kinda backed ukg raphop so if he ever bothers with vol two it will be aight! (he won't bother.) (although it would be cool if westwood was the first to document good grime on a major label!)

in that respect it shows he's now following the lead of our beloved semtex, who just upped his career by like one million notches: he did the scratches on "stand up tall"!

(if you are gonna get all anal about it and do like a league of weird uk rap super dj's achievements then westwood would still be tops for getting namechecked on nore's "banned from tv" and big ted would be second for presenting kids satellite tv channel trouble and then shortee blitz would be 4th after semtex because he worked in deal real.)

who the fuck is that!?!?!

johnny mnemonic? also it is the worst tracklist of any westwood cd ever.

oopsy!

40 days of spizz blends is postponed for a while because we are nearly out of bandwith for august already. in the meantime, why not tell us which ones you were feeling or not feeling! and send us music too! gwan!

40 days of spizz blends

eighteen: j-kwon - "tipsy" spizz blend

(j-kwon is like the first rapper to make me feel old, my time must have passed because he looks so fresh-faced and vaguely like he doesn't know how the fuck he ended up in his own bizarrely scatalogical video; i kinda felt it with cassidy too when he does the 'six in the morning' gesture and looks unsure of how many fingers to hold up; back to school with you scamps! anyway it hardly needs pointing out that the tipsy accapella belongs on some extreme radio testtube science - the og beat is already quite extreme - but let me just ram it home unnecessarily with this "overprotected" beat; remember "overprotected"?? perhaps the realest britney single ever and you have to sing like the whole first verse and chorus before people remember it! fucking fools)

40 days of spizz blends

seventeen: g unit - "stunt 101" spizz blend

(sometimes i think "stunt" is my secret favourite song that i could never honestly tell people is my favourite song because it doesn't match any criteria anyone would want to put forward; i mean the beat is aight - it has those amazing digital reggae fills - but not really something to dance interestingly to [criteria #1!] and g unit just do their g unit thing - 50 gargles and lloyd has one perfect line out of every ten and buck drops his bitchy fashion stuff [this should probably be criteria #2 but anyway] and it all goes down smooth but nothing really makes you go omg wtf [the real fake criteria #2] etc; and yet it is by a huge distance the best song on the g unit album and probably the best song ever made, someone please explain that to me! so i chose to honour it with some proper real undie beats from visionaries and yeshua da poed [!!]; in other news zane is playing that old faith no more song and later he's debuting the new green day single and dizzee is in the studio, cool!)

40 days of spizz blends

sixteen: drama - "left right left" spizz blend

(christ it's hot today! i have used this accapella with lots of different beats and it always works about the same; the beat is soulo/jaimeson's "switch", which should be best remembered for the 12 having a 4x4 version on one side and a half speed version on the other [being a complete dick i use both in this blend!], why don't all 12s have that?? and is the 4x4 version urban house like wot spoony talks about?? spoony had spizzazzz hero victor off bb5 on his radio show the other morning and claimed he would act exactly like victor has if he were to be on bb; as opposed to chummily sucking everyone's dick, hey spoonman! dude is annoying without the rest of the dreem teem around him)

40 days of spizz blends

fifteen: trick daddy - "dro in the wind" spizz blend

(so you remember 2002 yes? time to cast your minds back! no doubt released amazing singles; girls wore skirts over their jeans; strawberries and cream frappucinos looked quite tasty; willow was evil; sugababes were good; dj's slipped old electro tunes in all the fucking time - it was an innocent time, and one which must never be repeated, but you have to wallow in it while you play this blend)

songs wot would be good if they didn't have rubbish drums

shapeshifters - lola's theme

i don't like thuddy snares which could be mistaken for hard drums but actually come off very weak and boring! also, hi-hat pattern so lame it must be a parody. good horns though.

estelle - 1980

we all inexplicably love estelle here at spizzazzz no matter how bad her beats are, but if you ever need a reason to hate brit-hop then the ineptness of our nation's drum programmers is it. just use "funky president" if you can't think of anything good!

terror squad - lean back

shit storch combines boring dre one-chord vamping with timbaland's boring asian sample cd drums. world leans back?! nah ok it's still fun but i really hate s storch!

40 days of spizz blends

fourteen: usher - "yeah" spizz blend

(sorry but i had to find a song to go with this amazing club devastator crooklyn clan mo money riddim wot never got enough play whenever it was released - i love yvette michele and all of her non-hits but this beat was wasted as a rmx! i guess it could have been a rmx to mo money mo problems proper but then no one really needs a rmx to the most perfect song ever made, ahhhh it's stuck in a terrible void! but yeah people love this beat in reggae backrooms; also i managed to fit in the "huuh haah" sound which is like public enemy's greatest contribution to the world other than when they let anthrax dude rap instead of chuck d)

40 days of spizz blends

thirteen: lil mo - "4ever" spizz blend

(there were so many good r'n'b songs last year that i feel the world is still coming to terms with them, partly by almost not releasing any good r'n'b songs this year... the og "4ever" is amazingly real apart from fabolous' annoying verse, so i delivered some ghetto blend justice and took that shit out! they stay pretty while ima stay shitty)

40 days of spizz blends

twelve: 50 cent - "in da club" spizz blend

(um so perhaps it's been long enough to hear this again refreshed and renewed? no? oh fuck off then; another old beatnuts beat that is at least more worthy of being revived than "time's up"; 50's vocal is still outrageously perfect no matter how many times you overplay it)

40 days of spizz blends

eleven: three six mafia - "who gives a fuck where you from" spizz blend

(this is just to give some love to the new shondrae beat on yung wun's "i tried to tell ya" - dude has mastered that big synth with ridiculous over-sized keys which i must assume he is using!)

40 days of spizz blends

ten: usher - "u don't have to call" spizz blend

(we love usher so much it is almost oppressive, but out of all his great songs udhtc is probably the most boring - so who could liven it up with horns and moody acoustic guitar? oh hey what about my favourite white dude rjd2!? it comes off a bit weird but there's good drama in there... i promise there will be no more rj blends after this one though)

40 days of spizz blends

nine: ce'cile - "hot like we" spizz blend

(it's the spizzazzz tribute to mid nineties ragga/rap face-offs! with three different beats! i think i chose the ce'cile accapella because i don't like the og much and wanted to feel less like i'd wasted seven squid on the 12)

40 days of spizz blends

eight: trick daddy - "take it 2 the house" spizz blend

(all slip n slide is crying out for blends with everything ever so there will probably be like seven more before the 40 is up! this one sounded better in 02 but it's still pretty fun; the beat is youngstar's "pulse xtra"; the new dizzee single is kinda pulse-ish huh! that's an electroclash-like turnaround already!)

40 days of spizz blends

seven: monica - "so gone" spizz blend

(one time i heard "so gone" in an all-night garage and it was like an r'n'b human traffic and-- oh forget it... beatnuts forgotten melodirap beat + greatest accapella of 03, it's aight!)

40 days of spizz blends

six: whitney - "it's not right but it's ok" spizz blend

(with cant contain me beats from dizzee producer taz, surely the world's leading grime guitarist?! this works quite well as a build-upon-build er skank rather than immediate slap in the earhole)

40 days of spizz blends

five: freeway - "flipside" spizz blend

(i. there's bits from like five songs in this one - you will likely be sick of them know them all already... ii. it's kinda in the dj green lantern quality produced blends style which is nice sometimes... iii. i wanted to use the entire beatbox breakdown from the "rock your body" video but by the time i had hooked the md up to sky digital mtv finally stopped playing it?!? i swear it was the very same day it went off the playlist!)

(the "didn't you know" link below is fixed now soz)

40 days of spizz blends

four: ludacris - "what's your fantasy" spizz blend

(pretty much an excuse to remind people that fantasy is the best song yet made. a bit more in the style of 02 mashup, this comes with added b jaxx [not whatever song you are thinking.. unless you're thinking that one] and it's accapella-free! twice the realness)

the polyphonic ringtone update

"slow jamz" is really overwhelmingly good!

40 days of spizz blends

three: tha rayne - "didn't you know" spizz blend

(rayney day misery blend! with old obscuro big favourite when i was 15 royal flush beat - i even remember buying it from deal real when it had only just moved to noel street, mental! mid-late nineties london record shoppers say word! this blend is dedicated to lil missy for secretly being a goth)

usher looks amazing in the "pop ya collar" vid!

though we all like "the show" here at spizz towers, it's tempting to feel "burn" beating it to number one is a symbolic victory over the 'i hate ballads!' fantastic pop brigade. girls aloud are like the new marginalized indie pulp getting to number two annoyingness! anyway, in the "burn" video usher's girl jumps into a swimming pool of fire - that's fucking cool, and surely reason enough to start engaging with ballads!

40 days of spizz blends

two: iconz - "get crunked up" spizz blend

(old attempt to prove rjd2 should in fact sign with slip n slide - not very gangsta but i choose to blame that motherfucking clean acapella!)

40 days of spizz blends

here it is the groove slightly transformed
just a bit of a break from the norm
just a little somethin’ to break the monotony
of all that hardcore dance that has gotten to be
a little bit out of control it’s cool to dance
but what about the groove that soothes that moves romance
give me a soft subtle mix

right through the summer spizzazzz, in association with my other alias dj facelift, will put up 40 xxxclusive mixtapey blends! fun hey!

one: "oopdeewopdee" spizz blend

(with the head sprung beat! oh but hey the original "oopdeewopdee" is hot too, if unnecessarily gross in a nelly way.)

i'd like to publicly apologise to everyone who heard lil missy say "some girls" by rachel stevens is a good song.

fuck a spirit in the sky part two.

nelly - flap your wings

nelly nelly nelly and your disgusting "tip drill" video! you can only see that shit on late night channel u between skeevy five-minute sexchatline ads where long-nailed, tough-faced girls actually have an entire phone conversation on camera! which nobody even gets to hear! then they show the nerd lapdance video for the eighty billionth time and lil missy laughs at pharrell's pre-fame moustache. then we switch to something more wholesome obviously.

nelly is gross and doesn't really know how to reconcile his sweetness with his sexthugness like a biggie or whatever could, but of course he can still drop summer bombs that will resonate till at least november and sell eight million. i love "flap your wings" for its eyrie agility and nelly's typically playful vocal and that pitch-bent tambourine which trevor nelson said sounded like go-go. whatever oldster!

you should love it too!

ll cool j - head sprung

what is up with timbaland always giving people awful, awful, awful vocal ideas even when he knocks together a decent beat! "no no ll, more growl! you're a tiger!" what a load of shit.

(there is probably an amazing r'n'b blend to be made out of it though.)

4-4-2 - come on england

it took a lot of class to make this record.

brandy ft kanye - talk about our love

hello, insane paranoid ego fantasy dooming half-decent song to miserable unlikeability! brandy is sick of friends/family apparently gossiping and sniping about her relationship with, for the purposes of the song, kanye, but we all know this situation: if the gossiping actually exists beyond brandy's feverishly petty imagination then it is undoubtedly all that's holding the relationship together! raj persaud would never have allowed this song to be written, in fact he would have suggested brandy step her fucking game up! "what about us" was shit too.

from iraq to kuwait word up desert station

since i just mentioned the original, here is a brand new juelz santana "t.o.n.y" freestyle from his back like cooked crack mixtape! (smoothe da hustla fans [cough etc] will be pleased to note he also does a verse over dipset-inventing 95 classic "broken language"!)

dear eamon,

first i'd like to admit something: after i heard a couple of wack songs from your album i thought you would only be around for the spring single - much as i love your whitemandiva style (if you can be compared to anything ever, then you are the shiv-concealing nyc d bedingfield), i couldn't see myself repeat-playing "get off my dick" featuring someone called rap legend (you wish pal!). but then just a few weeks ago i heard "i love them hos" on the radio (i believe it is the first song on your album - good call!) and i was like, omg this is my favourite song ever! two and a half minutes of sylable-caressing, witty, waltz-time "old man music" where you even manage to repeat the first verse as the third verse! cool!

three days later i heard the daytime radio edit where the chorus is like "i love them- / love them- / love theeem-" which just sealed the deal: it's the best radio edit since "t.o.n.y", ten times cooler than "fuck it"! eamon dude, you made the number one summer jam! now let's kiss.

love from,
me

ps. i even like "get off my dick" now!

mario winans ft p diddy - i don't wanna know

check my original reaction to this song somewhere in this post! i was all about the epmd "you're a customer" drums like enya didn't matter!? oh well, this is still the most boring song i have ever heard people excitedly sing along to on the bus after they've just bought the cassingle. i can feel the concise sentiment that marks it out for r'n'b greatness but that doesn't make it fun to listen to. here is what rubbish word-hopper ghostface had to say about it in xxl's sex issue:

"i don't know why my man made that song "i don't wanna know". i wanna know so i can get the fuck outta here and leave ya punk ass alone. especially if i'm spending money on you or taking care of your little punk ass and you out there doing that shit. fuck that. i wanna know everything."

eamon - fuck it

me and non-posting spizz legend jack cable recently saw that polyphonic ringtone ad on one of the music channels where it's like 'we have the ringtones for "fuck it" and "furb"!' - which, yes, is fairly absurd but then the following exchange occured:

jack: what's the fucking point, it's the same beat!

me: wtf, it's pretty much the same notes but clearly frankee re-recorded her shit!

jack: no way!!!!

me: dude, you spent the last five years at the international college of beats! and you can't hear the difference!?

jack: ....

so let me spell out the differences for heads who care (stop pretending you don't care!): eamon has an expensive keyboard and weak but well programmed drums - the vibe is yummy-smooth. in fact the whole production suggests man-sitting-at-keyboard, an angle eamon chooses not to pursue in the video as he is busy rubbing pepperoni pizza into a girl's face. frankee has tuffer drums and brutal synth stabs. the busier feel brings to mind a group of enthusiastic midi-literate session musicians who's big break is to replay this tune while frankee sasses in front. (her chorus sass still strikes me as a really bizarre re-interpretation of eamon's vocal.)

hi guys!

yes that was a long-ass holiday, i imagine no one's reading anymore... and it's still all good. so now for some

out of date rvws we meant to post months ago

the 411 ft ghostface - on my knees

i have decided the reason this year sucks is because there have barely been any good r'n'b songs. most rap songs need an r'n'b twin to make full "i'll never forget this beautiful time in my shitty life" impact, and vice versa. they don't even have to be musically similar (although "so gone" will always be twinned in my head with the snoop/nate/warren version), for instance last summer "never leave you" had young gunz "can't stop won't stop" as its foil - we played them back to back, we heard them on the same radio shows, they belonged together like t boz and that naughty by nature dude! "never leave you" was even sweeter by association when you heard the gunnaz' too real to eq the mics harshness which was even rawer by association etc. two summers ago "dy-na-mi-tee" suddenly made sense when i heard it played close to "guess who's back" by scarface.

maybe it's a spring/summer thing in fact, i mean i can listen to nothing but rappers all winter but when the sun comes out hip hop needs extra sweetness around to sustain it. yeah yeah i haven't forgotten endless guest appearances like ghostface on this 411 song but they never really compare to how two songs can compliment and send secret messages to each other via radio or a mixtape or your winamp playlist (not ever on an album because albums are boring). the 411, who are british and do their verses in awkward spoken word, don't really need ghostface. not that "on my knees" is so magnificent, or that i don't like ghostface (though thinking about it i don't much), just that i love r'n'b and i don't want it to always be rap as well when they can co-exist so nicely in a different way!

so ignoring ghost's verse, i think the beat is going for a brit-kanye vibe because there is a nice string loop and a pitched-up soul vocal snippet (in the video they all pretend they are singing this snippet which is cute), but it turns out that a brit-kanye vibe sounds more like some kind of portishead girl-group experiment instead of kanye himself. (maybe that was obvious all along.) this is surprisingly cool! it shines on the radio too, even without an immediate rap twin. it might be because i first heard it on the essential selection amid a bunch of house stuff but whatever - more than anything it makes me excited for what 'the' 411 will do next, it could be really bizarre!

omg that pic has been at the top for a week!

sorry! anyway, where are all the fun spring songs? let us know what they are because we only like the joe/g unit and g unit/joe songs at the moment.

also, congratulate lil missy on her writing for a certain teen magazine, go buy them all and figure out which one it is!

what we saw on music tv yesterday



- lil dude of grime ashman, with his amazing song that i've forgotten the name of! the video has real authentic school kids wot live in london and the grimy stairway where skepta makes all his beats. channel u in the daytime is like ninety per cent public service brit hop now, and shit is still addictive! all the videos cost twenty squid and most of them feature specially hired police cars (the same police car??) for well-dressed uk rap dudes to stand on top of.

- also on channel u we finally caught the video to my favourite song of all time, "dipset anthem", and omg it felt like a cultural event! albeit one that happened a year ago! like when cam'ron steps out of the car, pink shoe first, has life ever made more sense? i wish i could rewind back to 03 because this year sucks in comparison.

- some new girl called fefe dobson?! she has a weird name and she's black but her song has guitars, mental. the video is cool in a 'i identify with your pain, troubled teen!' way, like at the start she's taking a mutliple choice test and all the dots on the page turn into the word average - the best way to spend an effects budget ever!

- milian rolling around in ink again.

ooh say what say what say what / ooh girl you know what sucks



urrrrr funk pop! foul production and w young's new umm outpatient hair, not a good look.

the cover is quite cool though because of the mysterious spectral session bassist, slap those licks dude!

we love them roc-a-fella stickers



hey i like hip hop, i'm glad it's back. my god, "all falls down" is still really bad! the cam 12 is kind of disappointing because "get em girls" is only in some lame clean version with different drums. even people who didn't like the og version have been known to make the screwed up face and go wtf! it's ok though because you get "shake" - initially sounding like one of those boring def jamaica songs... ok it will always sound like that but the def jamaica album didn't have amazing squeaky voiced hooks and cam's "foolish lyrical antics" (- xxl magazine!). now let's just look at the stickers.

five reasons it's cool usher is number one

1) "yeah" is usher's fourth greatest single. at first i thought it would become so annoying as to be like my favourite song of all time, but the subsequent lack of 'ahhh my ears are burning' has taken the edge off.

2) usher is clearly a bitter, miserable fuck and this news might bring a flash of a smile to his bewildered face.

3) on the uk 12 there's another lil jon-laced song which you can't find on the album - it turns out to be a melancholy flipside to "yeah", where usher recounts the day he met some prostitutes and judged them to be morally unsound. it has that same amazing synth preset.

4) my sister loves "yeah" and plays it all the live day long, which is by some distance better than her previous fave - motherfucking franz ferdinand with whatever that stupid song was!

5) the video has those cool space lights. if you watch lots of usher videos you might notice dude has never ever changed his hair. isn't that kind of weird!

milian - dip it low

things that are annoying in 04 r'n'b part one:

that fucking slowed down clap in place of using a proper snare! handclaps in general have become so annoying!

despite having separate fabolous and shawnna guest-rap versions, "dip it low" was first promoed in january to super-muted response. i think even trevor 'leave your preconceptions at the door' nelson himself was non-plussed. it's pretty but the drum hits are in wilfully non-danceable places and millennial golden age r'n'b songs only sounded good during the golden age! perhaps milian was annoyed she only caught the spizzazzz-inventing dirty pop tail end of it but whatever, time to move on and be more like beyonce or joe. we should all be more like joe in fact. so in a move that helpfully suggests her record company hate her, "dip it low" actually went back to the lab and returned with... some handclaps! and a slow-ass dancehall drum pattern on top of most of the song.

really i'd like to hate on it (maybe because it feels like she's cynically backing the jamaican horse - even rob them co will say behind your back that dancehall sucks at the moment anyway!) but it does become more danceable and likely to further milian's success, which is now more important to me than some song i was sick of by february; whatever her next single is, it is likely to be amazing. there is still a problem in the shape of the video: milian goes around looking like beyonce, wears horrible leather, twists her legs into strange positions and finally lays on a bed of ink while several dudes pull her around so she gets covered in it. wtf is she trying to say??

lelee/showki-ru - baby baby



well at first we weren't sure it ws her, like any sort of weird basketball playing looking woman could have wandered into the studio in jamaica and said 'oh yeah i ws in swv' to get session work and who would have questioned her? but i listened and it's really true, it does sound like a swv, although we still think it must be that extra lanky one who had heavy bangs in the late 90s... but it's her and she's gone reggae! unfortunately that means she now sounds nothing like the 'dance remix' of i'm so into you. yeah i guess i have to admit the song itself is pretty boring but it's nice to know that lelee is still into music and hopefully having a really fun life in jamaica!

joe r'n'b

dj kay slay obv reads spizzazzz (he probably googled himself in this month's spizzongs) because he has put out a song called 'not your average joe' featuring three r'n'b (and rap) joes! those joes being joe, fat joe, and joe budden. joe sings "it's joe and then we got joe and then we got joe" in the hook which is probably the funniest line in the song. fat joe doesnt say anything remarkable. a bit unhappy with how things are progressing so far, joe budden tries to get out of the whole debacle by claiming to be named bill! so to kay slay (or do you prefer drama king?): hi! this was a kind of funny idea but it didn't really work. better luck next time.
love,
toffee b.

five lame things

1) "sweet dreams my la ex" - suddenly evil for marking the return of the shuffle beat, so now we get "with a little help from my friends" (strangely no one is claiming this as 'shuffletech'!)

2) saying 'fiddy' instead of 50 cent. ahhh so lame!

3) saying "oh rap is so corny now, even jay-z says so!" what the fuck does he know! didn't you ever hear "sunshine"? or "moment of clarity" even? god i hate rappers who aren't 50 cent.

4) justin's "i'm so self-aware and slightly naughty!" reaction shot at every awards show ever. is this stock footage?? actually now that i think of it this is kind of cool.

5) that observer music magazine - the "she wants to move" of sunday supplements! usually i can read any old shit quite happily (especially if it's sort of free) but man, this magazine is so terrible my eyes watered.

jc chasez - annoying

i get a bad feeling when i think about jc chasez. lots of people think he is better than justin timberlake and even i admit that justin can be a bit tiresome sometimes but jc is just so boring. he is even less sexy than thicke, he's not funny, his songs are pointless and unfun and full of stupid proper sounding not very good eclectic influences. he reminds me of an exboyfriend of my friend who used to live in elwood and ride a bike and wiggled his eyebrows beyond the call of necessity. he always made us listen to talking heads instead of rick astley. another bad thing i think is that jc could easily be a character on secret life of us.

underdog project - winter jam

they endeared themselves to me in the summer of '99 with summer jam! "this aint nothin but a summer jam.... brown skin and cinnamon tans whoooah.... this aint nothin but a summer jam... we're gonna party as much as we can....heeeey...whoa-whoaah....heeey.... summer jam alright"

now they're back with winter jam! which is exactly the same as summer jam but they've changed the lyrics slightly ("this aint nothin but a winter jam.... good times with family and friends whoooah.... this aint nothin but a winter jam... were gonna celebrate as much as we can....heeeey...whoa-whoaah....heeey.... winter jam alright"), added an acoustic guitar, some whooshy wind whistling thru the trees noises, and a girl!

also they removed all the beats. it sounds a bit like the weird acoustic versions of dj sammy songs that were tacked on at the end of his album. the production is much better than summer jam, it's like the song is rugged up in snug woolly thermal underwear instead of summer jam's frail t-shirty beats and voice.

westwood blogology

you can pretend you're listening live with us here, if you start about one hour into saturday's broadcast!



"big up dj codpiece!"

(haha he means dj greenpeace but westwood has recently become xtra-beligerent in his position as the most famous rap dj in britain so now he hates on all other djs constantly)

"i'm the reason he's on the other station!"

lil missy: westwood is on form tonight!

last night he was shouting about how much he's into fat girls! "even though i'm a skinny thing, i like big girls", westwood said, and then dropped the bomb. damn! this evening westwood is wishing everyone's boo happy valentines day! romantic!

he just played the new 50 cent track. i didn't like it!

e crunk: 50 cent - where i'm from

you think the hooks have dried up? fuck you, hater! lil missy is insane because already tonight we've heard two brand new joints as heavy as anything off get rich or dying. 50's hooks are so good it's like he's saying "the rest of you niggas better get a r'n'b girl on the chorus cuz you can't match my catchy steez!"

50 cent: making top 40 rappers sound like bad brit-hop dudes with run-on choruses since 2002.

lil missy: eminem - bully

eminem's new anti-source song is vicious! he's saying that the only reason the source ever sells any issues is because he's on the cover. i got this month's issue and it was FULL of eminem hate. so i don't get it. and the beat is really weak, too. the weirdest thing about this song is that he sounds haggard and old.

rob them co: "zane's down with us now"

oh yeeeah i just figured out dj greenpeace is doing the all city rap show on xfm right now! zane used to host that show b4 he stepped up y'see. greenpeace fat lace click beef is totally to be encouraged, students waving around their dj yoda tv theme show mix cds are really really testing my gangsta. make it stop!

e crunk: paul rosenberg

westwood has a lot of interesting things to say about rap, like usually he will be the voice of reason in any lame broadsheet article about how rap has "cleaned up its act" (because outkast don't call people fags anymore or something), and sometimes his interview technique is really good - trying to push people into admitting they prefered rap back in the day, and erm, trying to get them to diss ja rule - but faced with eminem's manager, westwood has one burning question:

"paul, what is your all-time favourite eminem song?"

cool! next week: westwood interviews tony yayo's prison guard.

lil missy: inbetween songs

there is a lot of masculine camaraderie . the boys discuss girls who have sex with groups of men, fashion, looking at playboy in the studio and their apartments. bored now!

rob them co: r kelly - wtf

phew enough talk time for nu r kelly! kells looks so good all dressed up james brown style on the cover of the nu xxl worldwide i was never gonna not like this but it's still hotness, sounds totally in line with all the em songs that tim just played b4, all carl weathers training with rocky and being secretly better vibe, and oh here's baby birdman too! this must be off the new best of both worlds thing... i keep thinking r is gonna break out into yodelling 'lion sleeps tonight' and it feels good. no one gives him props for directing donnie darko, that film was aight!

e crunk: nu cypress hill

cancel whatever 'punk funk' song you are downloading right now and get "rock superstar" and "rap superstar" by cypress hill! because you forgot how hot they are! don't get whatever new song this is though - abandoning rap-rock won't win you any favours from spizzazzz, "b" so-called "real"

lil missy: joe budden - my new flashy 80s rnb song

this song is flashy in an 80s way. but not in a bad 80s way, it's more grimey and vice city sounding. it's like old fashioned pop but in a good way! this song is slick and funny and cute. and at the same time, it's totally dirty sounding.

i like it!

lil missy: some r'n'b jam

i like this song very much because of the fiercely strong female vocals. none of that kelis shit here! it's like she's having a total go at you - i wouldn't like to be on the recieving end of her madness!

e crunk: jay-z ft bounty killer - public service anouncement rmx

totally cool and bizarre rmx: just stick bounty killer right in the middle and then carry on like nothing has happened! there was one time when b killer was the only jamaican dude who sounded any good over rap (yo i swear just earlier today i pulled out that "suicide murder" rmx with jeru where bk does his thing over "ice cream" and "danger" and it still kills), it was all mad lion's fault! anyway, it's cute to have him back with a straight dancehall vs new york thing, and this is a durably heavy beat!

lil missy: young gunz - no better love

whenever westwood announces that he's playing a song "for the ladies" you can tell it's going to be a pervy one. this young gunz song is no exception! sorry but if someone said to me they wanted to be my mother and my brother, i'd be, like, ew!!

rob them co: kanye west - thru the wire

ahh man i always file this away in the outtray but every i hear it it's so damn fresh, this is still the definitive kanyekazi 4ever! it's a shame no one can afford to buy the whole of 'i'm still standing' off elton john to stick on the end of this tune like how it is on the 'get well soon' mixtape, it's like naked in the rain skyscreaming worldchampion amazingness.

lil missy: kanye west - all falls down

this song is sleepy and soulful. it's mellow and fruitful and peaceful and i like it very much. kanye also has a sexy and commanding voice and i think that's why it works so well against the chilled vocals. i'm sure i'll get bored of it if i hear a lot of it, so i am taking it in lil doses.

e crunk: some song wot samples that epmd beat ft p diddy

erm sorry about the vagueness! anyway once upon a time spizz was gonna do a goth r'n'b day but like most other things we never got around to it. luckily that doesn't mean goth r'n'b was finished yet! here it is resurrected by some dude (who we will call 'joe r'n'b' [no, not joe]) and it manages to incorporate epmd drums and a puffy verse! the only thing that really makes it goth is some heavy synth washes but if that isn't good enough for you then step off! so would anyone like to tell us what this is?

e crunk: outkast ft sean paul - hey ya rmx

terrible!

some reggae dudes doing a cover of "hey ya" and changing the chorus to "ganja"

terrible but my 14 year old self is like, yeah man! hitting switches

lil missy: a romantic interlude

there is a girl in the studio and when westwood figured out she wasn't with her boyfriend, he said: "we got some loose change in here!" ew! and he keeps saying how beautiful she is and saying happy valentines. westwood sounds totally wasted. he is dishing out a lot of romance advice tonight. he advises all the boys to wear aftershave, and get their girl's gifts and flowers. he's saying that if you give your girl gifts, then she'll pay back in full. westwood is so totally dirty... in a really good way! pharrell please take note!

e crunk: usher/lil jon/ludacris - yeah

take that and rewind it back, lil jon got the beat make ya booty go *clap*
take that and rewind it back, urrsherr got the voice make ya booty go *clap*
take that and rewind it back, ludacris got the flow make ya booty go *clap*
take that and rewind it back, lil jon got the beat make ya booty go *clap*

if you are insane and you don't like this song yet, just keep playing this bit!

peter andre - an e crunk perspective

dude used to be the creepy kid you knew at school who was going to show everyone by growing up to be a pop star with hottt abs (god how i prefer abs to p andre!) and dude is still fucking weird!

peter andre - an australian perspective

i ws a bit younger than lil missy when i first knew about peter andre because andre the buff ws of course from my homeland, australia! before he became well known internationally for 'mysterious girl' (his most tropical song) and his defined abs and super gelled hair, he had hits just here in australia for songs such as the funky junkie and gimme some kind of sign. he does, as missy says, have a summer sound, which makes a lot of sense when you consider that he grew up in sunny queensland which is full of pineapples and bananas and abs. the video for 'the funky junkie' ws full of joy and peter danced around with a beautiful girl who wore a sarong. peter himself wore multicoloured stripey jeans and no top - to show off his striking torso. i still really like gimme some kind of sign and i sing along to it quite involvedly if it's on the radio. it would usually only be played on double T fm nowadays though. hopefully there will be a resurgence of peter andre airplay now that he's releasing the new song insania. but i'm totally looking forward to hearing insania too! it reminds me of the group taxiride who also made up a word for their music: imaginate.

mya ft chingy - fallen (zone 4 rmx)

winmx, the most rap-friendly of file-sharing appz, suggests the og version of "fallen" is surprisingly popular! surprising because not in my wildest dreams would i think anyone wanted to hear the mysterious and talented mya singing over an especially annoying pharcyde song. whose fucking bright idea was that!? maybe mya is in the kanye-led cabal currently hustling the takeover of rap and r'n'b, who are all like 'well actually "93 til infinity" was just as good as "nuthin but a g thang"'. yes yes, dudes-of-a-certain-age, revolutionary ('but gangsta') thinking! 'each tribe album has reflected a different period in my life,' they seem to be saying. just kill me! it has to be all about maturity, like rejecting the essential immaturity of the undie/mersh divide and saying, blah blah what's good is good, i'm just tryna be real! "the first nigga with a benz and a backpack" ('look, i can still make funnies while being mature!')

i can feel that even if it's a totally boring sentiment. and i can't really fuck with this cabal because it has probably allowed people like the heatmakers to buy nice houses and stuff (and make a ton of amazing beats!) just cuz they use samples! cool! oh yeah, kanye is still great too, except for that dreary-ass "all falls down" song (somehow even more annoying since he re-recorded the lauryn hill sample).

the remix of "fallen" is vaguely in line with the cabal - it has familiar samples and it could almost have been a freestyle fellowship beat - but it has that cool over the topness that you can often only find on soundtrack albums (this is on barbershop 2, go out and buy it!). afrika drums, whining synths, dramatic stop-starting, hand-claps, that sound from "south bronx", it's all here! mya sounds good as always but chingy is the kick: his voice is so associated with digital sheen that when his verse explodes it's like... wo. when did anybody else bother to be so energetic? probably not since souls of mischief, huh!

grossie josie!

google motherfuckers step off!