Oooooh. E-40. Minimalist beat. You can’t go wrong.

Set countdown timer for 30th of March. “Revenue Retrieving”. Two albums. “Day Shift” and “Night Shift”.

Still the rapper doing the most with rapping? Most probably.

I decided to pare the list down to just ten tracks. I thought it would be impossible, but in reality the ten pretty much picked themselves. I only quibbled slightly on points of “what is my favourite on that album?”. The ten I’ve ended up with has maybe three or four tracks that appear on some of the other lists I’ve read around the internet but still feels comfortably personal as a whole. Without further ado, here it is. Five here, five in part two.

10. The Walkmen – The Rat
(From the album “Bows + Arrows” 2004)

This song sounds to me like 45 years of post-rock-&-roll had been compressed so tightly into the bodies of these five blokes from DC that they pretty much had to explode. It doesn’t sound as if they came up with exploding as a good idea for a song or that someone suggested they might want to explode if maybe they didn’t have anything else to do at the studio that day. It sounds like they’re exploding out of their instruments, involuntarily.

My recurring nightmare as a child was of an intangible sense of unstoppable expansion. Sometimes it might feel as if I was being chased downhill by [something] and that even if I could outrun it, its expansion, its swelling, would catch me and envelop me. It might be in the room, growing toward my inevitable destruction. It could be that the earth itself would become porous and, as it ballooned out, would subsume everything (me) on it.
This song sounds like that feeling, except now I’m not so afraid of it. It is more than a little exhilarating.

9. Killer Mike – My Chrome (Feat. Big Boi)
(From the eventually released but essentially shelved album “Ghetto Extraordinary” 2005)

Much of my favourite music of the decade 1993-2003 came from the Dungeon Family. Organized Noize, Outkast, Goodie Mob and their associates. It was, on reflection, a golden age of Atlanta Hiphop sparked essentially by one studio, or one production trio. They shattered the glass ceiling that had previously kept regional Hiphop (i.e. not New York Hiphop) as just that, regional. This last decade has seen most of Rap’s stars come from the south but whilst the south finally blew up, standing on the shoulders of Big Boi, Cool Breeze or T-Mo, the Dungeon Family themselves went more than a little quiet.

After the Outkast album (yes, that one) sold more copies than it is possible to imagine at the end of the decade, it seemed as if the music industry washed its hands of their compatriots. The Goodie Mob, without Cee-Lo, were not about to make them a “Hey Ya” after all.
When Killer Mike, who had been riding shotgun for Big Boi for a few years by then, released “My Chrome” on Outkast’s Columbia imprint in 2005 it felt like the dawning of a new era. I remember feeling like this second generation of the Dungeon Family were almost certainly going to rush the stage and take their place on the thrones that Outkast had carved. Thrones occupied by T.I.s and Young Jeezys rather than Killer Mikes or Backbones.

Sadly it wasn’t to be. Mike has gone on to make some great music but none of it particularly in the tradition of Stankonia. None of it likely to see worldwide success and critical recognition whilst ALSO being great great Hiphop.

“My Chrome” didn’t achieve what it ought to have. The label moved house, the album was shelved but it remains a monster of a track for me, largely due to Mr. DJ’s production. Little hi-hats and splashes tingle across the two channels, the horn stabs are straight out of 60s Batman and under it all there is this odd, out of place, Ska rhythm. Futuristic still and perfectly balanced.

8. Paavoharju – Yllään On Aamu, Korennot Ja Kesä
(From the b-side of the “Uskallan” 7″ 2006)

Rain. A cuckoo. A sustained guitar tone. Piano. Piano. Piano. Interference. Piano. Piano. A sense of foreboding. Disarray. Piano. Piano. Some order. Tennis. Piano. Guitar. Cuckoo. Tennis. Piano. It’s fair to say this is the most affecting ambient music I’ve ever heard. Sometimes it verges on the invasive. Like, you ever wonder how it feels when Professor X or Jean Grey is poking around inside your head? Maybe it feels like this song. I think Paavoharju are willing you to get through it all but I’m not certain. They might be chucking life at you for sport.

7. Madvillain – Meat Grinder
(From the album “Madvillainy” 2004)

“Borderline schizo, sorta fine tits tho”. If rapping is about words (and I’m not sure it is) then DOOM was THE great master of the turn of the century. His work with KMD was brilliant but largely conventional. His first solo outings in the late 90s were dysfunctional, original and also brilliant, but I think his writing definitely peaked with his Viktor Vaughn and Madvillain work in 2003.

No syllables are spare, no line feels freestyled, it is all exceptionally penned, each word thought about and picked carefully. The opposite of Jay-Z’s no-paper technique and before rappers did all their work on their BlackBerries. Some tracks have a lot of real content (“Strange Ways” or “Rhinestone Cowboy”) but the greatness of the album, and it might be my favourite of the decade, is in the joy of playing with words. He’s Edward Lear “doing bong hits on the roof in the West coast”.

Madlib, who is perhaps even more creative than he is prolific, revels in having an MC to work with who is actually worth listening to. They combine so well that any of five tracks could have made this list but I think “Meat Grinder” with it’s lolloping gait and woozy bassline is the perfect vehicle for DOOM’s vocabularic intricacies.

6. Radiohead – Reckoner
(From the album “In Rainbows” 2007)

Radiohead are a good rock band aren’t they? Yes. Brilliant.
Now then, who chopped the drummer up on this eh? Johnny right? Sounds like he was banging on an MPC like some Hiphop type. I hope you all entered the remix competition they did a year or so ago which entitled you to download “Reckoner” in six instrumental stems. If you did then I urge you to spend 4:50 listening to just the drums/percussion track. It is quite something. Once you’ve listened through that, play the full track again. It is quite something. Now repeat for all the other separate parts. It is quite something.

I was going to have “You and Whose Army?” instead but then they’ve got a few tracks like that haven’t they? They don’t really have anything else quite like this. Quite beautiful.

Top 5 to come in Part 2.

Gotted some nice bits of vinyl recently. A couple of nice moody soundtracks from two of the masters. Everyone needs the UN Resolution on Racism on vinyl right? Bottom right is a UK HMV copy of an Impulse comp that has a bunch of tracks unreleased elsewhere on vinyl. Gooduns.

Some Impulse purchases am I rite?? My orange spine hunt continues. That Jackie Paris is actually pretty cool for some cornball Sinatra stan. That Mel Brown record has a hefty bit of drums on it. The other two are just nice original copies of classic albums.

The top two have Okay Temiz on drums. He is definitely one of the best drummers ever, from anywhere in the world and if you see a record with him on, grab it. The Indian record has Jnan Prakash Ghosh of “Drums of India” fame(!) on it. The Malaysian record is pretty cheesy as per usual but it’s got The Stylers backing the singer and they are always good for a song or two per album.

This Roy Meriwether album is mental. It starts out as kind of a Gospel album and ends up as crazy spiritual Jazz. François Rabbath’s “The Sound Of A Bass” is a fascinatingly original and musically jaw-dropping solo bass album from 1969. I also grabbed two great Elvin Jones LPs on Blue Note.

Some nice 12″s have been coming through recently. The first is a great track I’ve been after on vinyl for a while now, by Sylvia Robinson of Sugarhill Records fame. “PSK/Gucci Time” has got to be one of the greatest double-sided Rap 12″s of all time, seen here in it’s original Sound Makers Distribution pressing. “Do The James” and “Egypt, Egypt” are the kind of records that I would never have imagined finding original copies of ten years ago. I know you can find anything online, if you want to pay the price, but I like finding them in the wild most of the time. Like Pokemon.

How sleazy is this fucking porpoise? What a wrongun. Is he pimping an underage mermaid? This record must be good cos it’s bloody trashed.

So actually I think I will do an end of year post. 15 songs. One per artist. Youtube links for sampling. Uh…

1. Big Boi – For Your Sorrows (Feat. George Clinton & Too $hort)
Yes. Exactly. This is the music I would like to spend my time listening to in the coming decade. More please. After “Synthesizer” and this I think it’s also fair to say that a Big Boi and George Clinton full-length would be wholly agreeable.

2. The Rangers – Tag Em In (Feat. Myles “Big Deal” Brown)
This is an invitation, across the nation, a chance for the folks to meet. There’ll be laughin’ and singin’ and music swingin’, and dancin’ in the streets.

3. G-Side – So Wonderful (Feat. Chrystal Carr, G-Mane & SupaKing)
It’s kind of a piece with the preceding track “Rising Sun” and it’s definitely guilty of feeling like a Rap equivalent of some Euphoric House or a 90s U2 track but uh… G-Side probably made my album of the year two years in a row. I don’t think that ever happened before. Not that albums mean anything any more anyway. This song does though.

4. Florence and The Machine – Howl
Taking your production cues from “Hounds Of Love” is most creditable. The world is a better place when the Pop records you have to hear whilst out shopping happen to be good records. Ta. Ten points for the ending too.

5. Tha Dogg Pound – They Don’t Want It
Just two dudes rapping over beats. Daz is pretty formidable on this.

6. Yeah Yeah Yeahs – Skeletons
It’s like “Maps” but with interesting music and more Scot-ish. Guitars are for old men anyway.

7. MJG – Dope Track
“You a baseball, man, I’m a baseball bat”.

8. Jay-Z – Empire State of Mind (Feat. Alicia Keys)
Yeah! Woo! Put your diamonds up!
The version on the Alicia Keys album is a little too cloying. Even for me. Hovi doesn’t really say anything on this but I see it more as an “Izzo” than “some thought provoking shit”. Chee-Z, am I rite?

9. Fabolous – Everything, Everyday, Everywhere (Feat. Keri Hilson)
I kind of played this to death and I’m not sure if I like it any more. I played it most of the year though. I think if Fabo wasn’t so vacuous it would be higher up. Ryan Leslie’s personality is way too Self-Help-Guru for me but he makes some slaps. Like this one. I like Keri too, deal with it.

10. Gucci Mane – Wasted (Feat. Plies)
I have nothing to say about this song other than that it is one of my favourite songs of the year. Oh actually, the synth on the chorus sounds a bit like a 16-bit console trying to approximate steel pan drums. The video/clean version is stripped of almost all the words. Lolz.

11. R. Kelly – Echo
Kellz + Yodelling = Oh, off course, why didn’t I think of that!

12. Clipse – Popular Demand (Popeyes) (Feat. Cam’ron)
Heartbreakingly disappointing album. I guess calling for them to give up on having a hit record is as pointless as asking for a Malice solo LP, right? Just write rhymes all day (if you can find the time between cooking and bagging) and then get some minimalist beats from someone and don’t bother with choruses. If you really have an independent income then what do you need one rap dollar for?

13. Royce da 5′9″ – Shake This
The only Trad-Rap tune I actually listened to this year. Produced by DJ Premier no less. Quaint.

14. Willie Isz – Loner
I have a feeling that this Goodie Mob Rapper+Hipster Producer album didn’t get quite the attention that Gnarls Barkley got. Funny that. It is far better.

15. The Streets – Blinded By The Lights (Nero Remix)
Just an excuse to reprise that synth line. Appreciated. Now with less Mike Skinner. If only Dubstep producers came up with catchy rave tunes like this themselves…

I have nothing significant to say about the year in general. Next.

Anyway, this is of no interest to anyone now but I have to get it out of the way so I can get my flow back. Like Bobby Brown prizing a “dookie bubble” from Whitney’s sphincter, I am finally dropping my top 20 tracks of 2008.

In last to first, one track per artist, youtube links or download links where available…

20. Ne-Yo – Miss Independant
The Robert album got leaked and pushed back and “Hair Braider” was nice but no cigar, so I have to look elsewhere for my token RnB track. Nice synth line on this here Ne-Yo track and Ne-Yo isn’t too offensive. This is pretty much just here for the synth line really. That’s the cheap way into my year-end list.

19. Gorilla Zoe – Lost (Feat. Lil’ Wayne)
Best Wayne verse of the year that I can think of. At least it’s “interesting Wayne” as opposed to “superstar Wayne”. Good track. Nice bit of paranoia and the choppy “ah, ah, I don’t know what’s wrong with me, but I’ma keep that styrofoam with me” is for good.

18. E-40 – Showin Out (Feat. B-Legit & Laroo)
Most of the best Hiphop releases were cramped up at the tail end of the year but the Sick Wid It Umbrella comp kept me going through the middle of the year. It all sounds like 2099 and the whole crew gets theirs. This track was even better than anything on the (also very good) E-40 album.

17. Lil’ Wayne – A Millie
More people bought his records than ever before. More people hated him than ever before. He fell off a little but “A Millie” was something we hadn’t really heard before and now it’s what everyone else is trying to sound like. It is pretty nuts and rapping like that is harder than it sounds, see this for proof.

16. San Quin – Rockin Up Work
Strong album. Hard to pick between this and “Reinforced Steel”. Fillmore’s finest seemed to get people’s attention this time round. There is no way of spelling the way he pronounces “boy” on this record. Not in English.

15. P Brothers – Digital B Boy (Feat. Milano)
My token UK track even has an American rapper. What can you do? I’m not too fussed about Milano actually but the beat here is as HEAVY as you’d expect from the Notts duo. How do they have such opposite taste in modern Hiphop to me, while still making beats that I love?

14. Danity Kane – Pretty Boy
My token Pop tune and the year’s best work from writing team The Clutch. I believe the Danity Kane project has been abandoned but they gave me this for my summer, before sailing of into the distance. Most credit must go to Danja for the music. Cheers. Nice one.

13. Re-Up Gang – Rainy Dayz
Pusha, Liva, Sandman and Malice continued their quest to boil up and condense series 1 of The Wire into hard rocks of songs. This is just them rhyming over a classic RZA beat but you know… The bit about dude moping around on Christmas day is pretty grand. Can haz proper Clipse album in 09 plz?

12. Count Bass D – Can We Hang Out Tonight
The Count is the man. Way cooler than Ted Hankey. The most human person in rap continues to make beats, rap and sing like nobody else. His album, L7 is even better than following him on Twitter! Also this is recommended for “I don’t really like Rap too much” folk as well.

11. Big Boi – Royal Flush (Feat. Raekwon & Andre 3k)
Dre doesn’t seem to want to do an Outkast album or whatever but he hooked this beat up, took half of it for himself and dropped the verse of the year. Dope Isleys sample. Return of the “BREAK”. “The morals that you think you have go out the window, when all the other kids are fresh and they got new Nintendo… Wiis, and your child is down on her knees, praying hard to the God for a whopper with cheese”. This should be higher up but it’s like a year old now and I rinsed it a little. Bring on the album…

Half way, long huh?

10. K.D. – Talk Like A OG (Feat. Jackie Chain & FDP)

Mostly under the radar, I really like the K.D. mixtape. Get it for free. The chorus on this just hits. Nothing much to say about this. Bama gettin’ money. RIP Pimp C.

9. Keak Da Sneak – P.I.M.P.
To say I’m up for a disco-rap renaissance is a pretty big understatement. In imaginary Beezland this is the kind of track that tops the charts all summer. Everyone has street parties and the chocolate melts in your mouth, not in your hand.

8. Wyld Money – Money Maker (Feat. Hollow & Owe)
Danja! When he’s not producing for Britney, Duran Duran and T.I. and making truckfulls of money, he’s helping out his Myspace rapper buddies. Bless. The Wyld Money Street Power 2 mixtape had 8 beats from him and was pretty nice. This track has the DRAMA and CHORUS sliders at maximum. Only a few months later “We buy land, we do the asset thing” is sounding a pretty dated bit of swag though.

7. Killer Mike – God in the Building
Rapper of the year. No question. His Sunday Morning Massacre series is probably the most musically fruitful thing to be delivered by Hiphop blogs ever. His album “I Pledge Allegiance To The Grind 2″ (mouthful) is my 2nd best of the year and he can’t give an interview without being a million times sharper than any other rapper. Oh, the track? I really struggled to pick my favourite and this won. Outstanding.

6. TV On The Radio – Family Tree
Last year I wrote; “Next year TV on the Radio will have a new album out and I can put a track by them on my list, tokenlike”. Here it is. My rock track of the year. If anyone tells you its their “Coldplay track” you have my permission to stick a chopstick in their eye. (Don’t you love youtube sometimes?)

5. Nas – Hero (Feat. Keri Hilson)
Everyone hates this but me. I usually sickup a little when Nas tries to get a pop hit. He’s such a cornball that he always goofs it up, but I dunno… you can’t go wrong with this Polow beat. Not for me anyway. The chorus doesn’t quite deliver and it sounds more like a Puffy song than Nas but… DRAMA! Oh and there’s a marching bass drum in the video…

4. Turf Talk – I’m Mannish (Feat. E-40)
Ridiculous. Turf and 40 have to be my favourite rappers that come packaged together. This track has it all. Beats. Rhymes. Bass. Chorus. I can’t really play this loud enough. “I jusswanna hitchyo broadmayn”.

3. G-Side – Run Thingz
“Block Beataz got the best beats” was the truth in 2008. Inexplicably sampling Eurohouse cheese, Elton John or football chants and making about a million incredible next next next shit tracks for everyone in Alabama. The G-Side album is my favourite of the year. It’s so cohesive. It sounds like a real album. ST and Clova’s rapping has really grown on me. My favourite line of the year is “Massa tryin’ to make it Mars, I mean NASA tryin’ to make it to Mars”. That new “New South”.

2. Young Gunz – Chase That
“Smoother than Persian, younger version of The Mack”. The opening bars of this are so fire that I can’t play it without pulling it back. People that spent any time with me in my country lair can probably attest to this. I’m doing it now. I wish this was on vinyl so I could buy doubles and act like an annoying mixtape DJ all day. Young Chris is still great even if Jigga did steal all his mojo for his self. Actually you know what, I can’t explain this tune, if the first bar doesn’t grab you then just leave it alone. It pretty much blows my tiny mind. Rewind.

1. Jackie Chain – Rollin’ (08 Remix Feat. Jhi Ali, Rich Boy & Attitude)
Yeah, this originally dropped the year before but I never heard it then, and the retarded extended remix is way more better anyway. REGARDLESS, this stupid, E-popping, Robert Miles sampling(!) nutbag tune has to be my tune of the year so I don’t give a shit about dates and all that. Block Beataz completely ignoring dusty old rules of what you are and aren’t allowed to do with Hiphop beats. If Mali Boi and C.P. aren’t multi-millionaires by this time next year then this “Hiphop industry” is worthless.

Whew, that took ages.

I have to go and listen to “Rollin” again now. About five times. It’s nine minutes long and it’s 5 AM already…

“We ain’t slept in weeks”

Ice Cube’s eyebrows should have won an Oscar and a Grammy by now. They look like someone used the Twirl filter on them. Photoshopped at birth. I have wonky eyebrows on account of having an abscess removed (badly) as a kid. I kind of forget about it but I guess it’s really noticeable, being that it’s right between my eyes. My wonky is not as good as Cube’s wonky.

They took years to honour Scorsese’s eyebrows though. The bit in Anaconda where he shoots the snake in the head and goes “BEETCH!”.

I got this comment spam yesterday:

“Your guestbook is example of middle-class guestbooks. Congratulation! I?ll show your site and guestbook to my friends.”

If Cube read that comment, you know what face he’d make?

My favourite Cube song is either “We Had To Tear This Mothafucka Up” or “A Bird In The Hand”. He actually made at least two good songs this year. Something good to frown about.

Poet – All Hell Breakin’ Loose 1987

Feeling my raps at the moment. Today.
Actually I’m always listening to Hiphop, just sometimes it feels like I’m not. I get into more music of more kinds all the time, but Hiphop is skin on me and all that other music is clothes. Like right now, for instance, “Put Ya Filas On” by Schoolly D just came on random and my volume control wasn’t quite ready for it. I’m sat right between my speakers and I’d wager Mr. Weaver just took a couple of years off my earlife, but I’ll be damned if it wasn’t the best thing I’ve heard all day. Listening to music at a reasonable volume is the cousin of death anyway.

I don’t normally put raps up here. Kind of because there are a million Hiphop blogs out there and I don’t have particularly rare shit that no one else is posting. I’m gonna put a few lesser known favourites up this week regardless because, you know, it’s what I’m feeling.

This record came out a couple of years after the aforementioned Schoolly D had kicked the (then) polite world of recorded Hiphop in it’s stomach and paved the way for uncompromising hardcore rap.

Poet went on to work extensively with production legend Molly Moll and form the groups PHd and Screwball but in 1987 he was on the rocks. Rocks and programmed drums, and not that crossover shit that Darryl and Joe had taken up the charts with Steve Tyler. No this is about as threattening and uncommercial as Hiphop got in 87, and all the better for it.

One day I’ll convince my favourite Rock-Only pub to let me play a couple of hours of strictly Rap-that-samples-Rock. It’d be great. I’d go. This would be amongst the prime cuts and all hell would break loose.

Right now I’m really looking forward to the 100th anniversary of Olivier Messiaen. The Southbank Centre has a bunch of concerts this year showcasing his work and I’m definitely going to at least Des Canyons aux etoiles and Turangalila-symphonie which the Southbank describes as “requiring an orchestra of colossal dimensions and a large array of tuned percussion”. I’ve got no idea who goes to modern-classical concerts but I guess I’ll find out.

On a similar-ish tip I’ve been listening to some Terry Riley recently and marvelling at how much he worked like a Hiphop producer in the 1960s. Ten years later Miles Davis was busy being a Hiphop producer too and that period has just been covered by an exhaustive box-set “The Complete on the Corner Sessions”. Covering sessions for the phenomenal “On The Corner” and “Get Up With It” (and also “Big Fun”) the six discs mark an unbelievable stretching of musical boundaries for the early 70s. Heavy looping psychedelic funk but with personel capable of soloing some profound and beautiful shit on top.

I read a crazy rant by Julian Cope the other week about how Miles retired for five years after completing these sessions, not because he’d hit a dead end (as the Jazz critics would have you believe) but rather because he’d reached some kind of musical nirvana. It kind of works for me. Being any more ahead of his time would have had him making music from a time after his own death, which is some Marty McFly shit I’m sure the world couldn’t have coped with.
For me this box represents the greatest achievement of Miles The Bandleader. Nothing else sounds like it and best of all when you pull the book/cd wallet out of the metal case you can see all drawing and that on the INSIDE of the box!

Another thing that’s in my head is the prospect of Goodie Mob reforming and recording together. They were interviewed at an Atlanta radio station together last November, laughing and joking with their international superstar Cee-Lo.
This isn’t that exciting to the world at large. They’d probably rather have another Gnarles Barkley album. It ought to be though. Goodie Mob are the best. Outkast are the best but Goodie Mob are the best too. They’re the Gospel and Soul to Outkast’s Blues and Rhythm. What those two bands have created in the last fifteen years, with direction from Organized Noize and with help from the extended Dungeon Family, is the most important modern music to me. The finest direction for music to be travelling in.
I love me some “Hey Ya” as much as the next guy, and “Crazy” is cool and all but the world needs some “Distant Wilderness”, some “Hootie Hoo” and some “I Didn’t Ask to Come”. I’m forever finding myself on discogs, correcting little things on Dungeon Fam releases and adding obscure Organoid 12″s that I pick up along the way.

This is where my head is at. Actually another section of it is lost in Harcore/Jungle right now as I copy my 12″s onto iTunes. “Ruffige” by MA1 (DJ SS), “Boyz” by A Bedroom In Hackney, “Let’s Go (Remix)” by Potential Bad Boy and “In Effect” by DJ Red Alert & Mike Slammer. These mind-blowing experiments in rhythm are fifteen years old and fifty years in the future. Maybe it’s not even our future but the future of some never-happened West-African global empire that colonised East London.

I’m trying to equip myself with the means and knowledge/understanding/ignorance to make some futuremusic of my own. Something I can be proud of, or at least something to free me from the torment of not having tried. All these musics are in mind as I try and get closer to that music. Cross fingers.

From last to first, one track per artist…

20. Tracey Thorn – It’s All True
Disco 2000 (and 7) done very right. If I’d been out anywhere where this played this year I would have been really pleased, but I wasn’t so I wasn’t. It’s great.
(From her album Out Of The Woods)

19. Dude ‘N Nem – Watch My Feet
Did you know “eskimos” can rhyme with “egg rolls”? It can. The second best really stupid dance craze rap tune of 07.

18. Klashnekoff – Terrorise The City (Featuring Kool G Rap & Kyza)
K-lash’s album seemed to be a bit of a disappointment to most people but it wasn’t so bad at all. Some great beats on there, and this one blessed by the great G Rap, was the pick.
(From his album Lionheart: Tussle With The Beast)

17. Jay-Z – Success (Featuring Nas)
“I used to give a fuck, now I give a fuck less” could be how the world feels about new Jay-Z albums, but to be fair this year’s concept album (where the concept was “imagine it was 15 years ago”) was pretty solid when it came to rhymes. Between the official version and the K-Def remixes there’s plenty of worthwhile Hov to add to my playlists, and “Success” makes Jay-Z and Nas two for two on collaborations. Great beat, Jay must have picked it.
(From his album American Gangster)

16. Soulja Boy – Crank That (Soulja Boy)
This is gonna be number one in the UK next week? After its been out for more than six months in the US? Anyways… The best really stupid dance craze rap tune of 07. I’m sure Hillary Clinton will be doing the Soulja Boy at the next caucus. There’s probably video on youtube of The Queen cranking back three times. Yoooooo.
(From his album

15. Baron Zen – Theme (Danny Breaks Remix)
The strange new wave archeology project that was Stones Throw’s Baron Zen album was probably better in remixed form and the Baron Zen Theme remix was the first time Danny Breaks had caught my attention since the Droppin’ Science days. He probably makes beats this great every day but I don’t notice. A big beat.
(From his album At the Mall: Remixes)

14. Freeway – We Gona’ Ride (Featuring Oskino)
Freeway’s first album is one of my favourite Hiphop albums of this decade. Great emotive rapping, great Just Blaze and the Roc beats and great guest spots. I was really looking forward to his much delayed follow-up “Free At Last” but when it dropped it was shitty. Exec produced by 50 Cent? No Beans or Peedi on it? No Just Blaze? Rubbish. He did have a great track on a mixtape though.
(From the State Property – Out on Bail mixtape)

13. Devin The Dude – What A Job (Featuring Snoop Dog & Andre 3000)
Andre and Devin are a great match and Snoop doesn’t do any harm here. My favourite Devin songs are allways these slightly mournful and quiet numbers, where Devin gets time and space to flow. Andre had the best guest spots of the year, whetting my appetite for a proper Kast album sometime soon.

12. R. Kelly – Same Girl (Featuring Usher)
The Kells album delivered on all fronts and more importantly we got the second disc of “Trapped in the Closet” which is really the best music, film and comedy of the year if I was being precise. “Same Girl” trod the fine line between great melody and great comedy that all the best Robert songs do. The album had the ridiculous lyrics (Sex Planet, Real Talk) and a great beat (Hook It Up) but it’s the Usher collabo that gets the blend right for repeated listening.
(From his album Double Up)

11. Turf Talk – Broke Niggas!
Much like the last E-40 album, the beginning of the Turf Talk album sounded like the best Hiphop release of the year. Somewhere around the half way mark it kind of crapped out and never recovered. This track is amazing though. The chorus sound like this year’s “Still Tippin’”. Big beat from Droop-E proving that Sick Wid’ It’ still lead the way out west.
(From his album West Coast Vaccine (The Cure))

10. Rihanna – Umbrella (Featuring Jay-Z)
Why lie?

9. Camp Lo – 82 Afros (Featuring Ski)
Ski is still one of the best Hiphop producers around. The Camp Lo album was a bit below par but its ten years since they made their classic so I shouldn’t be too mad. It had some real stand-outs though. The title track, “Sweet Claudine” and this here “82 Afros”. Rock toms and guitars make this sound like some 2007 version of BDP’s “Nervous”.
(From their album Black Hollywood”

8. Madlib the Beat Konducta – Selah’s Children
I really should have bought Madlib’s indian album thingy, I heard good things and I’d probably really like it. This track (it’s just a beat) was the closest anything came to blowing my speakers this year. Synth-bass for your face London. Madlib is still very much on top of his game.
(From Sones Throw’s Chrome Children 2 compilation)

7. Ghostface Killah – Yolanda’s House (Featuring Method Man & Raekwon)
I didn’t really need another Ghost album yet but you know what, it was actually pretty good. This track is Ghost doing stories. It’s like “Maxine” part 2 and can you believe Meth almost steals the show? Uh huh. Someone did a great chop on the vocal sample, some real MPC pad gimmick shit but it sounds great.
(From his album Big Doe Rehab)

6. Beanie Sigel – Why Wout I
Beans’ album is reportedly shit so I haven’t bought it. This track is phenomenal though. “Come on hun, you’ll forever be stuck under the baker’s thumb, (if) you keep dealin’ with them crumbs”. The only track of the year thats really there for the rhymes. Beans is the only dude really holding his head up with Clipse and Wayne when it comes to fucking with the English language.
(From the State Property – Out On Bail Mixtape)

5. Aloe Blacc – Happy Now?
I’ve never really clicked with Aloe Blacc or his old group Emanon and this is produced by Four Tet who puts out as much tripe as he does good stuff but this tune here is the business. Really. I like it when cuddly soft singer/rapper types get all huffy and pissed off with being seen as cuddly singe types. Great beat. I’d love to see Stones Throw get Four Tet to do a proper rap album with someone. When he focuses he can really get his shit together. Doors samples? Something like that.
(From Sones Throw’s Chrome Children 2 compilation)

4. UGK – Int’l Players Anthem (I Choose You) (Featuring Outkast)
So the beat wasn’t new but Dre’s verse stuck in a lot of peoples heads this year. More hits for Three 6, a bit of recognition at last for UGK, just in time for Pimp C to die to young. The other three rappers don’t light up your brain on this but they do bring their best flows for your ears. I think Big Boi was taking it easy in 2007 so I’m expecting big things for 08 from him. God knows what will happen to Bun B now his partner is gone.

3. Timbaland – Miscommunication (Featuring Keri Hilson & Sebastian)
The best pop song I heard this year. Hilson has a really nice pop voice and Tim and Danja can do this in their sleep (see Bjork, Britney etc) but there’s still no one better than them. It may sound really simple but theres a lot of nice, creative musical devices going on here, a lot of counter rhythms in the vocals that just mark Tim’s stuff out.
(From his album Shock Value)

2. T.I. – Tell ‘Em I Said That
Ay, ay, ay. So it wasn’t a great year for T.I. His lacklustre album took the lustre from his King Of The South crown and getting caught buying a personal arsenal doesn’t look like it’s gonna benefit his career much. He really ought to listen to his earlier albums, when his message was “Be Better Than Me” rather than the “I’m realer than these other dudes” which is whats left him looking a very real bid. Danja again on the beat here. Like I said him and Tim do this better than anyone and this is EXTREME DRAMA RAP of the finest order. It might be said that Danja’s work on the T.I. and Britney albums was actually better than what Timbaland did this year… This track is crazy.
(From his album T.I. Vs. T.I.P.)

1. Radiohead – Reckoner
They had me at the first bar. There’s a lot of Radiohead songs that I’d love if they had some quality polyrhythms under them, if they sounded like this. Take the beat out and it’s another Radiohead song but with that shaker, that crazy switching ride… amazing. Free to do what they want they can now make this kind of “complete” music. Everymusic. Theres a fair bit of it on the album. Music that people with very different taste can agree on.
(From their album In Rainbows)

Favourite tracks of the year?

A week or so sunburning near the equator and then a couple of weeks of meltdown back down in the big smoke had left me too fried to cook any blog patties. The cold snap brings respite in spite of it not being all that hot before? Oh snap.

Random heat/cool stuff:

My favourite Lord, Hurk, is reinternetted and dropping burners on brown paper “every day, daily”. The above mugshot of TKONY is merely the biggie small tip of the drored iceberg (not slim). Looksee.

DJ Jazzy Jeff + The Prince Of The Roc = Fresh

Can we have some Peedi and Freeway albums instead of another Hov album? Nowplease!
That “Blue Magic” is nice though, in a “Hey Pharrel, that Clipse album was well recieved, you think you could…..?” kind of way.

Percee P vs. Lord Finesse Live @ The Patterson Projects, 1989 Youtubed at last. Perc’s album is out now btw and it’s really not a let down. Madlib produced (more Madvillain than Lord Quas) and full of highly skilled rapping uninterrupted by ice cream mans. Highly recommended for the trad-rap crew.

While I were sleeping the ha-funny Hiphop magazine Fat Lace is back as a blog. It seems to be funded by RawkusCorp but don’t hold that against Drew Huge & Dan Large as they’re uploading ancient Tim Westwood show rips. Gotta’ catch em all.

Maaaaaaaaan seeing Hurk’s Biggie (Copyright Lord Hurk 2007) makes me think how we were gonna do Fat Lace but better but never got round to it. It would have been the shit though right?
Maybe we can do at least a T-shirt one day.

Maybe.

So anyways I’ll get back to the regular stuff tomorrow. Pez!