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Hey there. No more posts this week — fallen a bit behind, and it’s time to catch up. There’ll be an albums post this weekend, and then, next week, on to 2003.

Justin Timberlake – “Cry Me a River”

Released: 12.28.02 Peak: #3 The female fan that romantic pop has come to fashion over time is one demanding motherfucker of a construct. Never satisfied to hear that she is the unique object of her beloved singer’s adoration (I mean, honestly, how dumb do you think she is?), she also demands bitter stories eviscerating those [...]

Christina Aguilera – “Beautiful”

Released: 12.24.02 Peak: #2 The 2002 skankification of Christina Aguilera could have been enough to frighten the most permissive parents into keeping their daughter’s genie securely corked within her unrubbed bottle till she hit thirty. That once cutely flirty bare midriff had exposed itself as an insidious gateway fashion, the first loop in a spiral [...]

Queens of the Stone Age – “No One Knows”

Released: 11.26.02 Peak: #51 Of all nu-metal’s sins, its greatest was to foster a nostalgia for grunge. If you asked a high school kid in 2002 his favorite kind of music, and he said “rock,” you could be pretty sure he had the shittiest taste of anyone in his class. Aside from the pressures of [...]

Avril Lavigne – “Sk8r Boi”

Released: 10.28.02 Peak: #10 In a world where snooty ballerinas rule the school, feared and desired by all, and where cute boys with skateboards are despised and ridiculed, one raccoon-mascara’d brat stands up for what she believes in. Avril Lavigne is… Not-Britney. “Sk8r Boi” is ridiculous. Its plot jumps and jerks like someone dropped and [...]

Jaheim feat. Tha Rayne – “Fabulous”

Released: 10.29.02 Peak:#28 Maybe because “Fabulous” broke while I was living in Chicago, something in Jaheim Hoagland’s weathered voice rang stoically Midwestern to me, suggesting one of those grimy white-skied days in mid-winter when the sun skirts around the horizon instead of rising. Actually, Jaheim was a protégé of North Jersey’s own Kay Gee, of [...]

Freeway feat. Jay-Z and Beanie Siegel – “What We Do”

Released: 10.29.02 Peak: #97 For all his mic expertise, I’m convinced that Jay-Z’s great legacy will be as a fairly gifted A&R guy. Long before his ascension to Def Jam, Jay expanded Roc-a-Fella from a state of mind to a creative machine with a sense of sonic branding less common in MCs than in producers. [...]

Best Albums 2002 (6-10)

10. Cornershop — Handcream for a Generation Tjander Singh is like that freshman-year girlfriend you’re embarrassed to run into after college because she reminds you what a sucker you once were. Ultimately, When I Was Born for the Seventh Time contributed about as much to postcolonial pop as Odelay did to hip-hop, true. But significance [...]

Transplants – “Diamonds and Guns”

Released: 10.22.02 Peak: Did not chart Tim Armstrong and Travis Barker were hardly slumming when they teamed up with Skinhead Rob Aston. Barking and biting with indiscriminate rage, Aston was some kind of rock and roll original. As with Eagles of Death Metal, Transplants was an admirable instance of established musicians hoisting a talented eccentric [...]

R. Kelly – “Ignition (Remix)”

Released: 10.22.02 Peak: #2 R Kelly is the most naturally talented male R&B singer of his generation, as if we needed further proof that there is no God. Not that Kelly doesn’t “deserve” his gift–history is rife with talented scumbags, and some have sung R&B. Yet while Kelly can synthesize those strains of R&B that [...]