site news

Hey all, now that I’m finished 2003, I’m taking a time out for a couple weeks to travel, catch up on blog and non-blog stuff, and enjoy the rain. Be back after July 4.

T.I. — “Rubberband Man”

Released: 12.30.03 Peak: #30 How to sell a contradiction–that was the quandry mainstream rap confronted in the ’00s. With thuggery grown intractable and “consciousness” unsaleable, the thinking MC was called upon to reconcile the genre’s conventional violence, materialism, and sexism with the commands of his conscience, to embody these contradictions, grapple with them, at the [...]

Best Albums 2003 (1-5)

5. Fiery Furnaces — Gallowsbird’s Bark I admired Blueberry Boat and Rehearsing My Choir so much I convinced myself I enjoyed them; now I’m just sorry if I helped encourage Matt and Eleanor Friedberger to corkscrew inward toward pop-prog insularity. Even their latter-day returns to form are stiff convolutions up against this debut, a veritable [...]

Cee-Lo feat. Timbaland — “I’ll Be Around”

Released: Peak: #52 [R&B/Hip-Hop] There will be no “Crazy.” Been going light on spoilerish foreshadowing, partly because (shh) I haven’t fully finalized lists for the decade’s later years. But Gnarls Barkley? Just not gonna happen. With its forthright backbeat, its decorative electronics and strings and chorales, and a solid melody that Cee-Lo delivers with unfussy [...]

Twista and Kanye West feat. Jamie Foxx — “Slow Jamz”

Released: 12.2.03 Peak: #1 Before everything else, “Slow Jamz” reminds us of that spacious corner of African-American music that hip white expropriators have largely overlooked. We Ice People typically plunder black culture for the three r’s: rhythm, rawness ‘n’ rebellion. Sure the playful babymaking of “Lets Get It On” gives us confused sex-giggles. But Frankie [...]

Alan Jackson — “Remember When”

Released: 11.18.03 Peak: #29 Thank God for Jimmy Buffett. For a minute there, Alan Jackson seemed infallible. The brilliant “Drive (For Daddy Gene)” gave way to “Work in Progress,” a self-deprecating traipse through masculine clichés, and “That’d Be Alright,” which had kind words for a dangerously un-American world where “[E]verybody everywhere had a lighter load [...]

Kelis — “Milkshake”

Released: 10.23.03 Peak: #3 Look, I never said that I hated the Neptunes. I just make them work for my love, hit by hit. Also, I’m more susceptible to those tracks that veer away from their standard template. With its shuffling dancehall beat, its broadly slathered background of electrosquelches, and that amazing little bell, “Milkshake” [...]

Linkin Park — “Numb”

Released: 10.14.03 Peak: #11 From my snooty grown-up perspective, teen angst spokesmen seemed in a constant state of devolution throughout the ’90s, with each link in the chain sparking reluctant nostalgia for its predecessor. And so Marilyn Manson retrospectively rendered Trent Reznor a pop-industrial genius; Korn aroused a wistful yearning for Marilyn’s camp giggles; the [...]

OutKast — “Hey Ya!”

Released: 9.9.03 Peak: #1 One way to create a genuinely post-racial United States would be to get rid of all the white people. But even with miscegenation and immigration doing their bit, such a monochrome utopia will likely never exist outside the imaginations of Big Boi and Andre 3000. Young enough not to remember de [...]

Kanye West — “Through the Wire”

Released: 9.30.03 Peak: #15 Sure Kanye was the Roc’s token backpacker, and he hailed from the perpetual bridesmaid of American rap metropoles. Still, for the most hyped up-and-comer in the rap game to come across as an underdog took some doing. But Kanye has always had a weakness for challenges (why else would he ever [...]