Souly pickups of late. All US originals apart from the JB one which I’m not sure about.

The Impressions “This I My Country” – Quite probably my second favourite Impressions album. Includes the sublime “So Unusual”.
Earth, Wind and Fire “The Need Of Love” – A great hazy funk album with a lot of Jazz left in it. Check “Everything Is Everything”.
Otis Redding & Carla Thomas “King & Queen” – Gorgeous yellow label Stax copy. “Tramp”!
Melvin Van Peebles “Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song” – Tasty gatefold.

Nina Simone “Sings Ellington” – and plays amazing piano. They never talk about her piano playing. “I’ve Got It Bad and That Ain’t Good” will lay you out and iron you.
Otis Redding “The Dock Of The Bay” – The first posthumous album. Beefy beefy.
James Brown and his Famous Flames “Sing Christmas Songs” – The earlier, tamer JB xmas LP. Still pretty stunning for a Christmas album.
Booker T. & the MG’s “Hip Hug-Her” – Jackson Jr., Cropper and Dunn at their vital best. Oh and there’s some organ on top but you can ignore that if you want.

Little Richard “Here’s Little Richard” – I was gonna leave this cos 50s albums don’t really count. I kind of want the singles more but you know, if you can look at it as an album, then Richard’s first is as good as anything ever. “Tutti Frutti”, “Slippin’ and Slidin’”, “Long Tall Sally” and “Rip It Up”!?!
Ike Turner “A Black Man’s Soul” – Some of the funkiest music ever played. “Thinking Black”’s bassline, “Getting Nasty”’s piano, “Freedom Sound”’s organ and a little thing called “Funky Mule”. Oof.
Bill Cosby – Hooray for the Salvation Army Band! – His music records are better than his comedy records. Great covers on this one.
Mandrill “Is” – Ooooh “Lord of the Golden Baboon” we worship you. This record is Mandrill’s best and properly bonkers with it.

Have bought a lot of vinyl and sat it next to the record player recently. I’ve played a couple. Such is life.

I was meaning to photograph them all but have so far captured the above quartet. The rest must wait. There’s some gooduns though. Ethio-funk sevens that really need recording onto the computer. Good Jazz and Soul LPs. Real nice.

Kate Bush – “Cloudbusting”

“but just saying it could even make it happen”

because we were talking about it at work and it is one of the best songs.

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…

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.

Nice to see The Rangers getting some. The kid Langston has been the nicest dancer I’ve seen in a while. The kids are alright.

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.