Monday, July 21, 2003
Random thoughts on my top 50 of 2000, part 2.
*
I loathe Baby, and have no clue how he’s become everyone’s favorite rap cameo whore. I hate 2002’s “Still Fly,” too. But Big Tymers nailed it, just once, on 2000’s “Get Your Roll On,” largely due to masterful production by Mannie Fresh, the architect of the Cash Money sound. 3-4 years ago, he looked as talented as maybe even Timbaland, crafting a new sound to hiphop; now, he appears to be that brief era’s Swizz Beats (his main competition at the time). If you don’t believe me, check out Cash Money – The Instrumentals for the proof of his giantness.
*
Chicks On Speed are just as much a conceptual art project-as-music as Fischerspooner, only where they fall flatter in some ways, they succeed more thoroughly in others. Being based in Berlin somehow makes them much cooler, too. “Glamour Girl” is a marvelous accident, a goof which somehow ended up better than most of the year’s house singles, with an odd perkiness which comes off as believable, beyond belief.
*
Killing Puritans is an incredible, snarling, nasty beast of an album, the beast Armand Van Helden’s released yet. From the Scorpions-sampling of “Little Black Spiders” to the unholy cumfest that is “Koochy” (more on that later), this is the sound of – as Van Helden himself once referred, glowingly, to Basement Jaxx – house music getting fucked up the ass. It’s not, however, without its joy, most notably on retrofitted “Full Moon,” featuring Common. Armand goes all ’85 disco-mutating-into-what-we-know-now-as-house while Common spits “I’ll House You” lines all over your area, and you believe once again that dance is life.
*
Carl Thomas, please pick up the white courtesy phone. Hello? Bueller? Bueller? Hearing “I Wish” does offer me the opportunity, though, to discuss my #4 remix of ’00, which was done by a then-coworker’s husband with too much equipment and time on his hands. From a mix he titled Paper Chase 2000 - the kind of bootleg mix that you used to be able to buy on street corners in big cities, and still can in streetside record stores – I call this “I Wish/Ryde Or Die Chick (DB Blend),” wherein the mixmaster simply flips up the instrumentals of each track and rematches them with the opposing vocal. This is premium hiphop mixing, and it goes down a charm.
*
”True – if I was you, I’d hate me too.”
- Lil’ Kim, “No Matter What They Say” (Notorious K.I.M., Undeas/Atlantic, 2000)
*
If I ever met a guy who said things to me like the lyrics of Mary J. Blige’s “Beautiful Ones,” I’d run to Ontario with him and get hitched in a heartbeat. Romance ain’t dead.
*
One of the buried treasures of this decade so far is Ice Cube featuring Krayzie Bone’s “Until We Rich.” A relax-yo’-mind ’70s-sounding soul sample underpins Cube doing his “if I ruled the world” riff while Krayzie catches bones with his teeth on the chorus. Cube then vamps out talkin’ ‘bout how “the best thing in life is life.” I love the way that even when he’s in a good mood, he sounds so damn angry.
Inspirational lyric: “Taught you what a trick and a ho is/taught you what a 654 is.” And he did, didn’t he?
*
For the record, I liked “Desert Rose” by Sting featuring Cheb Mami long before it became a car commercial. The best single the Policeman’s made in nearly a decade.
*
“I Can’t Wait” might actually be the greatest song Ol’ Dirty Bastard has released thus far. Produced by the Neptunes (I think), it samples what sounds like a cop-show theme from the ‘70s, just adding to the intensity. And Dirty just goes fucking nuts over the track. Is he the Captain Beefheart or Syd Barrett of hiphop, completely crazy and ridiculously gifted? Think about it – he gives shout-outs to Luke, “all the schoolteachers,” “the Eskimos,” and himself, amongst others.
*
Please follow up Where I Wanna Be, Donnell Jones.
*
No Doubt are fun, spunky, full of life and fire. But they hit a surprising stride on the sad, lovely, truthful “Simple Kind of Life.” After hearing it, every time, I just want to give Gwen Stefani a hug. The kicker’s the last line of the last verse: “You seem like you’d be a good Dad,” Gwen sings plaintively, and I almost cry.
*
I loathe Baby, and have no clue how he’s become everyone’s favorite rap cameo whore. I hate 2002’s “Still Fly,” too. But Big Tymers nailed it, just once, on 2000’s “Get Your Roll On,” largely due to masterful production by Mannie Fresh, the architect of the Cash Money sound. 3-4 years ago, he looked as talented as maybe even Timbaland, crafting a new sound to hiphop; now, he appears to be that brief era’s Swizz Beats (his main competition at the time). If you don’t believe me, check out Cash Money – The Instrumentals for the proof of his giantness.
*
Chicks On Speed are just as much a conceptual art project-as-music as Fischerspooner, only where they fall flatter in some ways, they succeed more thoroughly in others. Being based in Berlin somehow makes them much cooler, too. “Glamour Girl” is a marvelous accident, a goof which somehow ended up better than most of the year’s house singles, with an odd perkiness which comes off as believable, beyond belief.
*
Killing Puritans is an incredible, snarling, nasty beast of an album, the beast Armand Van Helden’s released yet. From the Scorpions-sampling of “Little Black Spiders” to the unholy cumfest that is “Koochy” (more on that later), this is the sound of – as Van Helden himself once referred, glowingly, to Basement Jaxx – house music getting fucked up the ass. It’s not, however, without its joy, most notably on retrofitted “Full Moon,” featuring Common. Armand goes all ’85 disco-mutating-into-what-we-know-now-as-house while Common spits “I’ll House You” lines all over your area, and you believe once again that dance is life.
*
Carl Thomas, please pick up the white courtesy phone. Hello? Bueller? Bueller? Hearing “I Wish” does offer me the opportunity, though, to discuss my #4 remix of ’00, which was done by a then-coworker’s husband with too much equipment and time on his hands. From a mix he titled Paper Chase 2000 - the kind of bootleg mix that you used to be able to buy on street corners in big cities, and still can in streetside record stores – I call this “I Wish/Ryde Or Die Chick (DB Blend),” wherein the mixmaster simply flips up the instrumentals of each track and rematches them with the opposing vocal. This is premium hiphop mixing, and it goes down a charm.
*
”True – if I was you, I’d hate me too.”
- Lil’ Kim, “No Matter What They Say” (Notorious K.I.M., Undeas/Atlantic, 2000)
*
If I ever met a guy who said things to me like the lyrics of Mary J. Blige’s “Beautiful Ones,” I’d run to Ontario with him and get hitched in a heartbeat. Romance ain’t dead.
*
One of the buried treasures of this decade so far is Ice Cube featuring Krayzie Bone’s “Until We Rich.” A relax-yo’-mind ’70s-sounding soul sample underpins Cube doing his “if I ruled the world” riff while Krayzie catches bones with his teeth on the chorus. Cube then vamps out talkin’ ‘bout how “the best thing in life is life.” I love the way that even when he’s in a good mood, he sounds so damn angry.
Inspirational lyric: “Taught you what a trick and a ho is/taught you what a 654 is.” And he did, didn’t he?
*
For the record, I liked “Desert Rose” by Sting featuring Cheb Mami long before it became a car commercial. The best single the Policeman’s made in nearly a decade.
*
“I Can’t Wait” might actually be the greatest song Ol’ Dirty Bastard has released thus far. Produced by the Neptunes (I think), it samples what sounds like a cop-show theme from the ‘70s, just adding to the intensity. And Dirty just goes fucking nuts over the track. Is he the Captain Beefheart or Syd Barrett of hiphop, completely crazy and ridiculously gifted? Think about it – he gives shout-outs to Luke, “all the schoolteachers,” “the Eskimos,” and himself, amongst others.
*
Please follow up Where I Wanna Be, Donnell Jones.
*
No Doubt are fun, spunky, full of life and fire. But they hit a surprising stride on the sad, lovely, truthful “Simple Kind of Life.” After hearing it, every time, I just want to give Gwen Stefani a hug. The kicker’s the last line of the last verse: “You seem like you’d be a good Dad,” Gwen sings plaintively, and I almost cry.
# posted by Thomas : 2:14 PM
