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…

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.