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14. Amy Rigby: ¡°Beer & Kisses¡± (3:40), from 18 Again: An Anthology (Koch 2002; released 1996).
Ideally, a best-of reconfigures the artist¡¯s catalog imaginatively enough to stand on its own: you may own these songs already, but not quite like this. Most of the time this doesn¡¯t happen. But for a natural singles artist who happens to make terrific albums, it can be a godsend--think Al Green or Creedence Clearwater Revival. And it¡¯s just as true of folks who¡¯d be singles artists in a better world, like Rigby, who at the very least is a song artist. Not only is 18 Again a perfectly reasonable substitute for the three excellent albums it compiles (though I wanna know what the fuck happened to ¡°Give the Drummer Some,¡± the awesomely tender-hearted bonus track from 1998¡¯s Middlessence), but it works as an enhancement even if you own them all.
This came to me the first time I paid close attention to the disc, on the 6 train from the Upper East Side to my Murray Hill apartment. On the Discman, I was pleased enough with how good the first three songs sounded: ¡°All I Want,¡± ¡°The Summer of My Wasted Youth¡± (both from Middlessence) and ¡°Balls¡± (from The Sugar Tree). In that company--and probably under the circumstances as well--¡°Cynically Yours,¡± the supremely mean-spirited ode to fourth-time-around love that was most folks¡¯ pick to click on 2000¡¯s The Sugar Tree but not a song I¡¯d ever been all that impressed with, finally sounded as brilliant as I¡¯d always known it was on a distant intellectual level. ¡°You don¡¯t suck, so I¡¯m cynically yours¡± is the tag line, and I¡¯d always found it off-putting--seemed too unwriterly somehow, meaning without apparent craft or particular inspiration, first-thing-on-the-page, almost thoughtless, especially in comparison to the crafted colloquialisms that Rigby nails so regularly. But in this company, the song¡¯s offhandedness gave it a sense of realtalk I think I¡¯d always ignored: sometimes, exactly how people say these things really is how they need to be said, awkwardly phrased or not. (Does it surprise you at all that I tend to try to write even when I should just talk? Should it?)
¡°Beer & Kisses¡± came next, and it hit me with an emotional charge I wasn¡¯t quite prepared for. I knew the song well (it¡¯s from 1996¡¯s Diary of a Mod Housewife); on a distant intellectual level, I knew it was her greatest song. Still, on Mod Housewife, I¡¯d always been a bigger fan of ¡°20 Questions¡±--maybe because of my frequent predilection toward novelty songs, but then again what else was ¡°Cynically Yours¡±? (Actually, that should be less ¡°novelty songs¡± than ¡°songs with novel structures¡±--list songs, meta-commentary songs.) But...well, there isn¡¯t really any other way of saying that sitting on the train, I almost cried when I heard the first lines (¡°We met in the supermarket/We loved like it was something new/From day one we could not be parted/You had me, and honey I had you,¡± the homely, semi-improvised ¡°honey¡± the touch that marks the song¡¯s indelible, heartbreaking sincerity) than just saying it, is there? I haven¡¯t played Mod Housewife in its entirety in probably four years. Having moved cross-country twice, gone through a couple of serious relationships, making the transition from wild-eyed wannabe scribe to a much more cautious and fearful person who actually makes a living writing but isn¡¯t always all that certain how good an idea it really is, hearing that song again jolted me hard. Epiphanies like that are rare enough on real albums or personalized mixtapes; on best-ofs, they¡¯re a blessing.
--20 June 2002
13. Solven Whistlers: “Something New in Africa” (2:33), from The History of Township Music (Wrasse import 2001; originally released 1958).
Misadventures in record shopping: last week, I went to the Virgin Megastore in Times Square, something I seldom do since I live in Murray Hill/Gramercy Park (my block is right on the precipice), ten blocks’ walk from the Union Square Virgin. Browsing through the African section, I came across a pair of compilations that looked decent, if a little pricey (but hey, I get enough free stuff to treat myself sometimes): The History of African Music, a 2001 release on Wrasse/Universal UK, and African Jazz ’n Jive, released in 2000 on Gallo South Africa. The 28-track History was an instant winner with room to grow (which it has), and fresh off its stuffed-full glow I put on Jazz ’n Jive, whose title and lineup reminded me of Music Club’s classic 1997 collection, Township Jazz ’n’ Jive. It turns out that’s not the only thing about the Gallo comp that resembled the Music Club compilation (whose selections, like most compilations of this type on non-SA labels, were licensed from Gallo): 15 of Township’s 18 cuts are also on African, which totals 24 songs. (For the record, the songs that aren’t on African Jazz ’n Jive are the Four Yanks’ “Dudu Wam” and the Manhattan Brothers’ “Ishumelosheleni” and “Thaba Tseu.”) And two songs made all three of the compilations in question: “Mbube,” by Solomon Linda’s Original Evening Birds, from 1939 and as the source of the melody of “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” one of the most important records ever made (read the whole incredibly detailed story for yourself), and this song, whose astoundingly pretty pennywhistle-and-clarinet melody is pretty much guaranteed to transport you into a modest version of heaven.
--14 June 2002
13. DJ Shadow: "Lost & Found (S.F.L)" (10:07), from Headz (Mo' Wax 1994).
Still his best, from the astonishing flip of U2's "Sunday Bloody Sunday" drums to the in-the-pocket waterlogged keyboards to the perfect, isolated Milesian horn riff that seeps under your skin during the second half. The scratches at the top aren't quite as head-turning as I thought they were when I first heard this in '95 (my first encounter with serious scratchadelia, in the form of the first two volumes of Return of the DJ, was still two years off), but as a statement of intent they still pack a punch. And I'm still mesmerized by the spoken-word sample that interrupts it five and a half minutes in: "Get high. Get above yourself, look down upon yourself till you're inside of yourself, look in front and back of yourself till the back and front of yourself is inside yourself, and then you'll see you only have to know yourself as yourself. Cos when you find yourself, you're gonna find that yourself is only yourself and the self that can only be yourself. So when you're in front or back of yourself, you're gonna find that your mind is in the center of yourself and God is nothing but yourself. And when you reach for yourself, you'll know that yourself is the only thing [sharp breath intake] that can happen to yourself, so that nothing can put you down [echo applied to last word]." In 1995, it sounded like all that is solid melting into air; now, having figured out that he keeps applying echo and reverb to it to give it a heavier, aqueous feel, it still does.
--13 June 2002
12. Atmosphere: “Blamegame” (4:47), from God Loves Ugly (Fat Beats/Rhymesayers Entertainment 2002).
Bragging’s nothing new to Slug, but for the many folks whose first exposure came via last year’s stunning Lucy Ford---one of the most deceptively casual hip-hop albums ever made---the “you’ll catch a face full of phallus” threats all over God Loves Ugly might come as a shock. They’re here on this quasi-dub skank-groove, too, but what you notice is how, well, petulantly defensive they sound: Slug sounds a little like his back’s against the wall, which is hardly unusual in itself (Eminem is the most famous, fawned-over fucking person in the world right now and all he can talk about is how beleaguered he is), but part of the appeal of Slug’s persona is that he doesn’t seem to be hiding behind masks. Except that he is: Lucy Ford’s “Nothing But Sunshine,” which first appeared on 1999’s Anticon: Music for the Advancement of Hip-Hop compilation, convinced a lot of folks that his father really had killed himself in a grain elevator after his mother had died. In typically dry Minnesota style, the clue that didn’t register as a clue until you already knew the answer was the coda, where Slug follows “Getting even with life by murdering cattle” with the sound of him doing approximately that while singing “My Girl” in a depraved voice, like he was auditioning for the role of Rory Calhoun’s son in a sequel to Motel Hell. (“Actually, if you listen to that song, you can hear that I’m actually raping a pig,” Slug told me last year. “Well, not really, we just made it sound like I was. But I do think that’s one of my better- conceived pieces. It got across everything I wanted it to lyrically, and musically it’s one of the happiest beats in the world. It has a message, and at the end of it, I rape a fucking pig! I should be famous.”)
According to Slug, Lucy Ford was meant as a narrative: “The album is a story from beginning to end: I get fed up with my woman, my city, myself and decide to leave before realizing the problem is within myself. There’s not a lot of braggadocio on it. In fact, I don't think there is any.” God Loves Ugly is closer to his 1999 cassette-only gem Se7en, a showpiece for what he does well: a little “Fuck You Lucy” here, the blunt throwdowns “The Bass and the Movement” and “Flesh” there. “Blamegame” is his anti-mainstream song (“Reprogram/A world full of slow jams”), only it doesn’t come across that way immediately: what he sounds defensive about isn’t the subject but his place in it. He goes out chanting “Blame it all on the game” into the echo chamber, an implicit challenge to the rappers he’s dissing. Or is that to himself?
--13 June 2002
11. Roots: “Mash Down” (3:47), from Voodooism (Pressure Sounds 1996; originally released 1977).
Despite Simon Reynolds’ advice, I picked this up at work recently for store cost, and sure enough, he was right--most of this is pretty pro forma, not all that impressive unless you happen to be a stark raving fanatic, which I am only up to a point. Nevertheless, this lovely bit of roots harmony is absolutely stunning--not quite the Congos, but close enough.
--6 June 2002
10. Jerry Lewis: “Rhythm Pleasure” (3:15), from Trojan Rare Groove Box Set (Trojan 1999; originally recorded 1973).
America put a man on the moon in 1969; four years later, the Aggrovators went there, too, armed with a Moog (or thereabouts). My favorite of the four versions of this riddim, mostly because Jerry Lewis sounds so unflappably nonchalant; he’s less a toaster in the wild, U. Roy mode than a figgin’ announcer. Meaning this is almost like TV theme music itself--for a very weird Match Game set in outer space, maybe.
--24 May 2002
9. Bixio-Frizzi-Tempera: “Nucleo Antirapina” (8:11), from Beretta 70 (Crippled Dick Hot Wax 1998; recorded between 1971-8).
Just what you needed: Neu!’s “Hallogallo” refracted through ELP’s version of “Peter Gunn Theme” (as heard on 2 Many DJ’s new As Heard on Radio Soulwax Pt. 2 mix, underpinning Basement Jaxx’s “Where’s Your Head At”). Well, just what I needed, anyway. Thanks to Nate Detritus for pointing this out.
--23 May 2002
8. Lo Fidelity Allstars: "Feel What I Feel" (4:18), from Don't Be Afraid of Love (Skint/Columbia 2002).
Super-bouncy! Not sure what that dude in the background is repeating like a mantra-virus but it sounds like "got me burning! burning and a eatree-and-bahhh!" Sounds good to me. And though the disc's credits say the woman singing is Philippa Alexander, I'd swear it was the second coming of Ellen Foley. In this case, that's a good thing, since Jim Steinman never did disco or breakbeat this well.
--28 March 2002
7. The Avalanches: “Electricity (Harvey’s Night Club Re-Edit)” (6:30), from At Last Alone (Modular/Toy’s Factory import 2001).
So is it a concept album or what? I think so, other folks I know think so, but that’s as far as it goes, because every time they or I try and exegete the damn thing there ends up being an argument. It’s good, sez one, but what’s so different about it compared to Coldcut or Double Dee & Steinski? Besides an entire fucking generation of people not being around for Coldcut or Double Dee & Steinski (largely forgotten outside of academic/critical/hip-hop or dance aficionado-snob circles anyway), I’d argue that there’s a greater emphasis on emotional response inherent in Since I Left You, a frankly shameless attempt to manipulate the tear ducts as well as the memory banks and rushin’-on-one energy glands whereas you can, fair or not, reduce the others to extraordinarily effective novelty records. That’s what makes it different from Paul’s Boutique or 3 Feet High & Rising, too: we’re not used to hearing such virtuosically kaleidoscopic sampladelia do more than just be clever, just parade sonix by our ears till we scream “yes!” or “murder!” or “copyright theft!” or “art!” Plenty of early ’90s breakbeat hardcore (what Simon Reynolds terms “’ardkore”--early jungle, essentially, stuff like “Mystic Stepper” or “The Slammer”) had this pull as well; so do the gorgeous sample-blur productions of Todd Edwards. But just as mainstream pop’s impact tends to intensify in the public arena, so does post-rave music. The difference is that the “public” here is implied: not just “did you hear that track at the club last night it was killer” but “have you been listening to that new album?”
Just like, conveniently enough, Since I Left You is largely an implied narrative--it feels like a story. The woman singing, “Since I left you/I’ve found a world so new” at the beginning and “I just can’t forget you/Since the day I left you” at the end frames it, and the songs in the middle feeling like the adventures of the person doing the leaving, the melancholy at the end a sort of denouement: now what? Where do we go from here? Did I make a mistake in leaving? Or were the adventures I just had worth the trip? One friend thinks the denouement is regretful: she’s looking back at making the move and realizing she made a mistake. But that seems too reductive to me. The neverending agape the music evokes, the sheer joyous bounty of it--there’s so much!--seems to signal a breakthrough on her part: she’s left a limiting relationship and is seeking to find herself by throwing herself open to every possibility. At the end, she’s seen and felt and heard and done so much that she finally takes a step back and takes a look at what she’s left behind. Of course she sounds melancholy. That’s how people who leave the place they come from far, far behind feel. Either way, the only thing she seems certain of is that she can’t go back.
Another thing is that Since I Left You sounds like it was conceived (or is at least taken by its fans) as an album--as a unified work, not just as a group of pieces that just happened to get stuck together in a particular order. These guys wanted to not just dazzle us with sonix or samplez, but to make a great, enduring work of art. Especially during a time and in a medium where everything can change suddenly at any time (the whole point of sampladelia and mixology, some would say), there’s something really appealing about that kind of ambition, especially for folks resistant to “trad,” residual, received formal tools, no matter how cunningly used. I can think of two friends--and there’s probably more--who utterly hate Bob Dylan, can’t understand what anybody hears in him, and refuse to believe that Highway 61 Revisited or Blood on the Tracks or Love and Theft might create their own world (sonically, not just lyrically or trad-meaningfully) worth inhabiting and gaining repeated pleasure from. Their loss, and fair enough. But not only does Since I Left You constantly shift, that shiftiness has an identifiable shape, so much so that after two dozen or more listens (and put me in the “more” category), the tools with which it was made all but disappear. You stop hearing samples and start hearing music. You stop hearing references and start hearing text. You stop hearing where the songs join with and crease into one another and start hearing where they begin and end--and start hearing how the one is as important as the other.
And the miracle of this remix--excuse me, re-edit--is that it allows us to hear this particular part of the tapestry in a new frame, as a complete work in itself: lengthened and given a “real” beginning (eight bars of mixable breakbeat) and end (eight bars of beatless swoon fading out). And it proves that the whole may subsume its parts, but the parts stand up pretty well on their own.
--28 March 2002
6. Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings: “What Have You Done for Me Lately” (3:11), from Dap-Dippin’ with…Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings (Daptones 2002).
Wary of Desco
More revivalism--yawn
But this grabbed me good
For one thing, the song
Used to be definitive
’80s synth-funk-pop
Now, it’s been transformed
Into ’74 funk
Sans any synth-pop
Favorite moment:
The bridge’s “no way” becomes
A bridge in itself
If there is justice
This will be a seven-inch
Single, and pronto
[inspired by Haikoo.com]
--26 March 2002
5. Soulwax: “The Magnificent Romeo” (4:25), from MP3 (white label bootleg 2001).
That ending, natch, is what inspired this choice all that time ago, though it would have been somewhat better if this one had the same introduction as its musical source. Instead, we get four bars of flanged/filtered drum machine for E-Z mixing, and then, a cappella, Kele LeRoc: “You keep on giving me the holdup,” followed by that bassline, the epitome of badass NYC punk-funk cool, and no I won’t hold it against them for being English if you don’t.
OK, backup time. If you aren’t already aware, this is a bootleg remix that combines the vocal from Basement Jaxx’s “Romeo” with the music of the Clash’s “The Magnificent Seven” (or, more likely, “The Magnificent Dance,” the instrumental b-side of the 12-inch that was actually a big club and radio hit upon its release). Lots of stuff like this floating around, haven’t heard much of it myself apart from Freelance Hellraiser’s “A Stroke of Genie-us,” which combines the Strokes’ “Hard to Explain” music with Christina Aguilera’s vocals from “Genie in a Bottle” to stellar effect. Douglas Wolk wrote a good sidebar on that one in the Village Voice, and he’s right about it. But I think this one’s better, and not only because I prefer both its pieces of source material to either of “Stroke”’s. As much as I love the groove of “The Magnificent Seven” I’ve never much liked Joe Strummer’s rap (an opinion which I share with much of the Western world, I realize) apart from the chorus, and the “Dance” remix’s dub FX have always seemed a little arbitrary---two impediments separating it from “good-plus” to “grrrreat!”
“Romeo,” of course, I lovelovelove, placing it sixth on my singles list this year, but I’m beginning to believe this version is even better. If the Strokes’ guitar snarls give Christina’s girlish innocence more sexual and emotional dimension, LeRoc’s cool sauciness becomes even more defiant backed up with the bassline’s strut. She sounds both earthier and more of a diva---the slower tempo and clearer lines give the sense of premeditated action rather than the impulsiveness of Basement Jaxx’s original primal bounce: she sounds wearier, more human, and can therefore be more demanding.
Of course, that’s not the only reason I love this to death. Since I’ve been convinced since about the fourth or fifth time since I heard the thing that Rooty was Basement Jaxx’s version of the great NYC early ’80s clubland melting pot that Sasha Frere-Jones likes to write about so much, this is the absolute most convincing vindication I’ve had yet that I’m right. The most enjoyable, anyway, Rooty itself aside.
--24 March 2002
4. Grand Wizard Theodore & The Fantastic Romantic 5: “Can I Get A Soul Clapp ‘Fresh Out The Pack’” (7:29), from Harlem World: The Sound of Big Apple Rapping (Heroes & Villains 2001; originally released 1981).
All right, I lied. About the frequency of the updates I’d be making to this page, obviously. About the way I’d be putting these things together--think of a new song to add to the mixes themselves every day, not just come up with stuff to say about them, but in reality the further in advance I plan sequences out (not entire sets/discs, either, but runs of four or five songs) the longer I take to write, since hey I already did that yawn. And about the last song, which was only here because I needed a bridge between Al Green and this track. I love it, sure, but sometimes you’ve just gotta have some glue, so there it is.
There’s a famous story from around the same time as this record. First day of the sessions for the Clash’s third album and Guy Stevens is behind the boards. The band warm up with a cover of “Brand New Cadillac,?an old rockabilly hit, and they play great, with the slight error of increasing the tempo during the performance. Stevens calls it a take and asks to move onto the next song. “But it speeds up,?the band protests. “All rock and roll speeds up,?Stevens replies.
So does “Soul Clapp?-or at least it feels like it does, which is one of its achievements. It’s 1981, almost nobody who doesn’t live or wish they lived in New York is aware rap exists outside that one novelty single that ripped off “Good Times?and that Blondie song and if they’re lucky Kurtis Blow’s “The Breaks,?and like a lot of kids, Theodore and the F.R.5 are trying to do some combination of get over, impress their girlfriends/parents/girlfriends?parents and make their mark on history. Theodore has long been credited as the inventor of scratching, though there’s none on this record (as there wasn’t on anything, to my knowledge, before “The Adventures of Grandmaster Flash on the Wheels of Steel,?released the same year). I don’t think any of the other folks went onto do much else, historywise.
So “Soul Clapp?is utterly generic, just like everything else on Harlem World the double CD reissue of stone-age rap that’s almost unknown today except among serious vinyl hunters and b-boys (until the disc’s issue last September, of course). But the way Sugarhill dominated the history books--deservedly, but still--the vitality of this stuff is still kind of a shock. And it keeps shifting, too: I settled on “Soul Clapp?as a Project-able track a couple months ago, but since then I’ve grown even more enamored of the track that follows it on the disc, Family Four’s “Rap Attack,?with its preposterously funky disco beat and ridiculous use of wide stereo panning (half the group’s on the left, the other half on the right; I don’t think anything but the beat itself is in the middle) and the vocals of a couple of the members, which are so mushmouthed and yet so fucking on-the-one they sound like someone doing a parody of early rap that’s actually better than what’s being imitated (the Diamonds-doing-“Little Darling?effect).
That’s partly because “Soul Clapp?starts out sort of sluggishly, at least compared to what it becomes. It opens a cappella (the reason I preceded it with “Sing a Simple Song,?which ends with the Family Stone’s instrument-free funk doo-wop) and moves into a precisely worked-out series of routines that climaxes with the high-energy vocal tradeoffs, the sequence that ends with “’Cause he can cut and make ya shake ya butt, y’all.?The 5 are “all black plus one Puerto Rican,?which definitely gets your attention even now--especially now, given that white and Hispanic and Asian MCs are no big deal anymore, if not the norm. “You might think I’m black from the way that I’m speaking"--hip-hop is how people talk now, period, whatever their color or background, and while everyone acknowledges its black roots (neglect to do so at your peril, son), it’s still become cross-racial in a way rock never was. Back then, no matter how many white punks dug it or how many Hispanic b-boys were mixing it up, it was seen as African-American, period.
This is one of the few hip-hop singles I can think of that has a great ending. Rock songs are often conceived as performances and therefore build to a climax, but in hip-hop it’s the opposite: sampling enabled producers to start with the climax (the James Brown yelp of “It Takes Two,?for instance) and sustained it throughout; most hip-hop (and house/techno etc.) records fade out, or come to a cold stop in the same place they began. So one major advantage of early hip-hop was that the live bands playing the tracks (usually the same conglomeration of musicians working pseudonymously and on the sly for different companies) could (a) make a track more intense as it went on and (b) give it an honest-to-god ending. In this case, a funk-band standard: suspended-climactic sped-up reiteration of the central bassline an octave or two above its placement in the song proper, then the root note (I think) played a step above even that, one-two-THREE, with chording hand sliding down and then off the fretboard like a film dissolve. As good in its way, to my ears, as the ending of “Roadrunner.?P>
--24 March 2002
3. Sly & the Family Stone: "Sing a Simple Song" (4:55), from Greatest Hits (Epic 1970)
Not much to say about this one except it's brilliant, which you probably know by now, or at least should. (Sorry; I'm feeling a little intimidated by this, which is sort of what I've been trying to do here and elsewhere, only better in many ways. And done in the time it took to listen to it, no less. 'Course, he's had a decade-plus to chew over this stuff, so no sense worrying it over. Either way, you should read it. And I should finish reading it.)
--21 February 2002
2. Al Green: "Love Ritual (Alt. Mix)" (4:14), from Love Ritual: Rare and Unreleased 1968-1976 (MCA 1989)
No, it hasn't really taken me this long to find a follow-up song. I've just been busy. And lazy when I wasn't busy. Surely you can understand me not wanting to spend every waking hour writing, right? Thanks for understanding. Anyway, today's my birthday, so I decided to give myself the present of actually DOING SOMETHING with it.
At any rate, this has always been the follow-up, from the minute I decided on the Pablo song. Usually, the linear mixmaking logician in me would put the older song first and follow it with what came next, rhythmically--you know, cause and effect. But the way this sneaks up on you, especially after "I Told Y'all"'s unbelievable grinding beats and atmosphere, like Coil doing go-go, almost sounds more revelatory--a like meeting a long-lost relative and discovering how temperamentally similar you are. Actually, if that were to happen to me it'd freak me the fuck out, but I'd sure be entertained by watching someone else do it. Something similar applies here.
Peter Shapiro, who writes for the Rough Guides music-books series and The Wire, once noted that this mix of "Love Ritual"--which stripped away the overdubbed strings added for its appearance as the leadoff track of Al Green is Love--sounds exactly like Fela Kuti, and he's absolutely right: the congas, the tense, very occasional horn blasts, Teenie Hodges' jittery rhythm guitar, the church organ. The difference, of course, is that where Fela's vocals got over on presence and conviction (just listen to him spitting out the words of "Expensive Shit"), Al Green merely possesses the most gorgeous voice ever committed to magnetic tape, and here he sounds...not completely possessed, but definitely in the throes of possession, wrestling with the demons he'd purge on The Belle Album. It's down and dirty, not in a sexual way (though that's certainly there, this is one primal groove and to some degree the lyrics could be interpreted that way), but, I suppose, existentially: when he does the throaty "Zula"s and falsetto "whoo!"s, it's very different, both in method and impact, than something as sculpted as "Have You Been Making Out OK"--and it's even more impressive when you realize that the whole thing's double-tracked. Wonder how many Christians have ever come this close to utter voodoo?
--18 February 2002 (I am now 27)
1. Petey Pablo: "I Told Y'all" (4:16), from Diary of a Sinner: 1st Entry (Jive 2001).
After 1998, I can't imagine anyone except his best friends and immediate family would have expected a better year from Timbaland. '98 is when he dropped Nicole's "Make It Hot," there were still singles being mined from Missy's and Tim/Magoo's first albums, and oh yeah--Aaliyah's "Are You That Somebody," quite possibly the most fucked up-sounding thing on the radio ever, the most audaciously experimental top-ten single since approximately, I dunno, "I Am the Walrus." At the time, I wrote that the only way he could top it was to perform John Cage's 4'33" on a drum machine. He hasn't quite done that, but "Get Ur Freak On," besides being '01's hands-down best single (give or take "Digital Love," that is), was close enough. The greatest fruit yet of hip-hop production's recent love affair with Arabic sounds (arguably launched by Jay-Z's "Big Pimpin'," produced by you-know-who), it's such a classic that even Nelly Furtado bleating over it just enhances it, if anything. Plus it contains the greatest spitting interlude in pop music history. By itself, "Freak" was a match for Tim's '98 output--I like it more than "Are You That Somebody," and that's saying a lot--but his work with Aaliyah and especially Petey Pablo put him over the top in '01.
I mention all this because I haven't seen much commentary yet on "I Told Y'all," and except for "Freak" it's my favorite Timbaland production of the year. (I didn't vote for it in the Pazz & Jop poll mainly because I wanted to honor singles-as-singles this year, but if it gets a release this year it's definitely on my ballot next time around.) It's also one of the most different-sounding things Tim's done, which is saying a lot: that slow-rolling percussion bit that sounds like an amplified pistol chamber during a game of Russian roulette, the low-slung guitar nattering away underneath the mix, those ominous background vocals. It's straight-up funk, almost, and it proves that he doesn't need to get weird to get you in the club, dancing your ass off.
Oh, and apologies for the extreme time-lapse between the last and this entry.
--5 January 2002
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