I was going to have the pure musical adrenaline rush that is Outkast’s “B.O.B.” here. It seems to have made it onto a lot of decade end lists but uh, I bought the 12″ comfortably in the last century and even if the album dropped the following new year I just can’t include it here. I know I had it long before I spent the early hours of 2000 throwing-up on the concrete of the South Bank Centre.

5. Clipse – I’m Not You (Feat. Jadakiss, Styles P & Roscoe P. Coldchain)
(From the album “Lord Willin’” 2002)

Timbaland’s best work falls partly into the previous decade. He has no tracks in my top 10. The Neptunes’ best work is, barring maybe two tracks, all in the 00s. They have two tracks in my top 10.
One of the greatest things about Hiphop’s return to drum machine sounds in the late 90s was the space it created. There is so much room on a Neptunes track. So much space for rappers to breath. No more gasping for air like Big Pun, they could all breath easy like Hov. Some it suited, some it didn’t. It suited The Clipse perfectly.

“I’m Not You” had me at hello. Pusha sounds colder than MC Ren, Jada is colder still and Malice wants you to know he is warm on the inside, he just doesn’t care about YOU. He cares for his kids, and theirs and their younguns after that. It doesn’t matter if you buy it, he sells it. It doesn’t really matter if you don’t listen to the words at all. Listen to that glorious pixelated soul-clap. It sounds like the Neptunes’ love letter to the devout followers of The Church Of Syncopation. This is my church. “God is great, the Devil is a motherfucker”.

4. TV On The Radio – Staring At The Sun
(From the EP “Young Liars” 2003)

Specifically the 4:01 original version. I need all eight bars of “hooooo-oooooo” at the beginning. When the bass joins Tunde’s vocal it is the greatest thing. When the jangly guitar comes in on top? Oh my days. Cheap digital hats. Vocal harmony. I cannot even slightly explain what happens in my head whilst listening to this song but I think it’s probably some autonomic shit. I think my conscious brain only gets a sliver of what my medulla is processing. I have listened to it more times than any other track and I have less to say about it than any other track on this list. I hear it not as I hear U2 or Wire but as I hear Omni Trio or Foul Play. The Weekend Rush 92.3 FM. It is visceral. It feels personal to me and yet it is their encore track. We must all be related.

3. Jay-Z – Excuse Me Miss Again (aka “La La La”)
(From the 12″ or also the album “Blueprint 2.1″ 2003)

In part one of this list I mentioned that I don’t necessarily think rapping is about words. For me at least, now. Perhaps it never really was. Bare with me as I haven’t really thought this out much. There’s a quote somewhere about the European musical tradition’s maligning of black music. Jazz was, and Hiphop is, accused of being centred on the worthless RHYTHM rather than the artful MELODY. The quote, and it’s Mingus or McCoy Tyner or somebody, is roughly that all the notes have already been played. We know them all. It is only the rhythm with which they are deployed that makes music. I’m paraphrasing and badly but I think this is how I feel about Hiphop. About rapping. I’ve heard most of the stuff rappers have to say and the rights and wrongs of the content have very little to do with whether I like any given track.

What I’m trying to say is that I listen to Jay-Z, on this here simple and mostly forgotten track, like I would have listened to Charlie Parker on “Ornithology” or “Billie’s Bounce” if I was a 40s kid. It is the rhythm. The pattern. It is unfolding. The Hiphop generation didn’t have saxophones or the inclination to blow them. They had their voices and they didn’t want to fucking sing. So after 24 years of recorded rap what you get is a guy who – while he hasn’t filled stacks of notebooks with much important stuff that he just has to say – possesses the greatest mastery of where to put words, how to bend cadences, when to go softly and when to really emphasise. His art is in the placement of syllables. Eighth-note runs of rhymes. He is soloing and the Neptunes are Max, Bud and Mingus backing him. Hov moves through rhyme schemes like a be-bopper would play the chord changes. Four bars in one pattern, then on to the next. Rap in the 00s was a Jazz solo in rhythm over a backing, the words didn’t have to matter. On this track they don’t matter one bit. The beat matters, the phased-to-fuck string synth matters and where Jay puts his words matters, and it is perfect perfect Hiphop. By my reckoning we should get Rap’s “Giant Steps” some time soon and then we can move on to something else. Can’t wait.

2. R. Kelly – Ignition
1. R. Kelly – Ignition (Remix)
(From the album “Chocolate Factory” 2003)

Expanding on the brilliant “You Remind Me Of My Jeep” needed two songs. One to make some cheesy parallels between sex and driving cars and one to celebrate the fact that you just recorded the most fucking amazingest song ever in the whole world ever.

The Sylus magazine best song of the decade, “the Remix To Ignition” is the hotel lobby to the original song’s afterparty. They are a piece. I hate to hear them separately. On the vinyl release of “Chocolate Factory” they are split across two discs. The most heinous crime on Jive Records’ notorious rap sheet. To get both tracks on one side of vinyl you need to get the album sampler. It stays in my playing out bag. There is nothing I would rather hear at the end of the night. The fact that 51% of the world’s population also loves to hear it is good icing.

I can’t tell you much about the song. It’s pretty stupid huh? Yeah. It’s a good job it’s music and not a piece of legislation or a schematic for building some essential medical equipment.

That southern sounding guitar sample. It sounds like Curtis and yet he probably rolls in his grave every time the song plays. Maybe not. I’d like to imagine he’d see where his Chicago son was coming from or at least see the fun side and crack a smile.

I can’t fail to smile. It gets me every time.

Bounce, bounce, bounce, bounce bounce, bounce bounce,
bounce bounce bounce,
come on…

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.

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”

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?

	5. Lil’ Wayne Some people think Guru is a great rapper. I think he’s the corniest rapper this side of CL Smooth. Some people think Wayne is retarded. I think he’s a great rapper who has mastered flow like few before him. Is he speaking to me? No but he’s way more entertaining than 99.99% of emcees. Even when he’s dissing my other favourite rappers and generally being a douche. Charisma is a hard thing to quantify but his verses are bigger than the tracks they sit on. His verse at the end of Khaled’s “We Taking Over” has been nuts.“Yidigg!”
	4. Beanie Sigel “Why Wout I” from the State Property “Out On Bail” mixtape is my tune right now. Beans’ stuff since “The B. Coming” has all underlined that while he may not make amazing albums he spits the most sincerely pained rhymes around. It’s no coincidence that he’s the only North/East rapper I’m really checking for right now. Ghost and DOOM would have ran this 5 a few years ago but they’ve both neglected the human side of their rhymes, getting caught up in their characters. Beans’ verse on Freeway’s “What We Do…” remains the most heartfelt and essential bit of rapping so far this century. He claims the upcoming “The Solution” will be his last album but here’s hoping that’s all Jordan/Jigga talk. “I’m the oh six Pied Piper, here to lead all y’all rats out to the city limits”
	3. Andre 3k Dre’s return to rapping has bizarrely taken the form of showstealing cameos on big remixes, as if he was some teenage new-big-thing. He’s supplemented the smash hit Lloyd and Rich Boy cameos with verses on the Devin and UGK albums to keep the grownfolks happy. Big Boi is officially my favourite and all that but Andre hasn’t sounded so good since “Gangsta Shit”. Is a proper Outkast album too much to wish for? Maybe not… “Like the boys in blue, when they come through with them boots, and they kickin down the do’, and they don’t care who they shoot, but we do care who they shoot, so we do what we must do…”
	2. Devin “Waitin’ To Inhale” remains the uncontested Hiphop album of the year. This isn’t just because nothing good has come out, it really is a great album. All his albums are great albums. There is no one even in the same sub-genre as Devin. He’s there all on his own. Personable-rap. Loveable-rogue-comedy-rap. Whatever. If you’ve got a sense of humour about your person you can’t fail to enjoy him. “…come back over here and put 72 BOOMS in it…”
	1. Malice (of Clipse) The meaner sounding Thornton brother laid down the definitive remorseful crack rap verse on “I’m Not You” back in 2002 but he wasn’t confirmed as a top level rapper until last year’s “Hell Hath No Fury”. Both of the Clipse sound great but it’s Malice’s lines that get stuck in your head, it’s Malice’s lines that you rewind. In fact I haven’t rewound a rapper this much since there was actual tape to wind. His verses on “Keys Open Doors” and “Wamp Wamp” are the most compelling raps in years from a technical stance. I will never understand how people can paint them as negative when they’re brimming over with the joys of language, falling over themselves to be the smartest kids on the block. Can we not wait four years for the next proper album please? “Shit could get ugly, should she talk to the law, and that’s just what I get, its the roses of war”

Who’s got five?