The Tris McCall Report

2006 Pop Music Abstract

Onward into the future.

Akon -- "I Wanna Fuck You" (w/Snoop Doggy Dogg), "Smack That" (w/Eminem)
True Jersey City Stories, vol. XXXVII: a few months ago, one of the last remaining Latino families on our block moved away. A group of post-fraternity boys and an accompanying Smurfette took their place. They spent the summer pounding brewskis, barbecuing meat, and declaiming about Alex Rodriguez's worthlessness and the sorry state of the Yankees. We don't like air-conditioning; we keep the windows open. During party hour, their music was our music: they'd drag the boombox out onto the deck and strafe the courtyard with soundwaves. Their taste ran toward NYC g-rap (50 Cent was a favorite) and certain testosterone-fueled R&B acts like Akon. "I Wanna Fuck You" entered heavy rotation in August and stayed there until the weekend nights got too cold to cook out. On Labor Day, they started drinking around noon, and by the evening, they were no longer capable of making it through a track without screaming along. At the height of the bacchanalia, the gang played "I Wanna Fuck You" twelve times in a row. Not even during Phil Simms broadcasts have I heard something quite so homosexual. Here you had about ten wealthy young drunk dudes out on their terrace, t-shirts soaked with sweat and assorted fluids, hollering I wanna fuck you, fuck you/ you already know, over and over. I knew.

 

All-American Rejects -- "Move Along", "It Ends Tonight"
If I was an emo kid, I would probably be pissed off about the way this d-bag has changed his hairdo and altered his mic approach in order to, you know, get with the program. I'm not an emo kid, so I don't care. The Rejects have bucked long odds to establish themselves as reliable pop radio hitmakers, and though I'd hate to put up with Tyson Ritter's histrionics over a full-length, in three-minute doses he's a champ. I still say there's no chance they're from Oklahoma. But even if they are just a bunch of prairie dogs with naturally (ahem) OC-worthy cheekbones, they're still some label exec's best and most calculated effort to turn the Get-Up Kids formula into jink-jink. It's working.

 

Arctic Monkeys -- "I Bet You Look Good On The Dance Floor"
Kapow! actually opened a show for these guys at the Bowery Ballroom -- their first gig in the United States, it turned out. I'd never heard of them. Heather Koenig wrote to me something like "welcome to the world of Internet hype and MP3 blogs", and I thought I knew what that was about. Turned out I didn't: I've never seen a club so simultaneously off-the-hook and staid. First of all, nobody could get in -- we weren't allowed a guest list, and the room was packed from the lip of the stage to the doors to Delancey Street. Moreover, the Monkeys set up their instruments right in the middle of the performance area, and their crew refused to allow us to move them. The support acts were forced to shoehorn gear in the few cracks they'd left us. Now, this struck me as uncollegial and rude behavior, and I felt that it reflected badly on the Arctic Monkeys' sense of rock and roll camaraderie, but then a few months later, the Go! Team pulled the same crap on us at Northsix. I guess being a spacehog is SOP for young British bands. See, this type of shit is why we had to kick your asses twice in two wars, and then bail you out of the fire in two more. Anyway, the folks from Domino Records didn't mingle with the throng: they just sorta drifted around in the balcony area, looking uncomfortable in suits they might have raided from their parents' closets. But there was very little happening down on the floor anyway: at least three quarters of the crowd were waiting to hear the one song they knew by the one band they knew, and were simply killing time before and after that happened. The next day, all the papers reported that the show was a triumph; you would've thought there was pandemonium in the house. A month later, the brilliance and excitement of the Arctic Monkeys' stateside debut was NYC conventional wisdom. Peter Gabriel said it in '86: we do what we're told/ told to do.

 

Badly Drawn Boy -- "Nothing's Gonna Change Your Mind"
Speaking of overhyped Brits, I remember the year 2000, when Damon Gough was supposed to be the new Damon Albarn, or maybe the new Damon Dash. But publicity campaigns end, and now he's just another goony adult-alternative singer with a generic ballad to hawk. He's still marginally more interesting than Keane, but his hipster cache is so far gone he may as well be Chris Martin. You've got to take it while you can, part 4080.

 

Belle & Sebastian -- "Funny Little Frog", "The Blues Are Still Blue"
Since jettisoning Isobel Campbell, B&S have completed their transformation from naïfs with no idea how to play their instruments to rock-star musos who could probably charge session fees to the Dundee up-and-comers. The funny thing is that their musical objectives have never really changed: they started out wanting to do blue-eyed soul and Smiths ripoffs, and now here they are, still making blue-eyed soul, still ripping off the Smiths. The knock on The Life Pursuit (and Dear Catastrophe Waitress, too) is that it's super-slick and arch, and hence emotionally remote. But Stuart Murdoch is now roughly 150 years old; if he was still singing about sexual confusion in gym class, you might be inclined to phone up the authorities. These days, he's more likely to crow about the advantages of unrequited love: in "Funny Little Frog", he's downright excited that the object of his affections doesn't know how he feels. That way, he can keep the relationship where he's most comfortable -- entirely in his head. It's sort of an answer record for everybody who ever called him a solipsist; sure I am, he's saying, and who really cares? They haven't been mope-rockers in a long time, anyway. "Frog" sounds like an attempt to reconstruct a Four Tops record using only circumstantial clues from Hugh Grant romantic comedies. Meanwhile, "The Blues Are Still Blue" could be the theme song for a Seventies sitcom set in a laundromat, right down to the "dog ate my homework" jokes. Neither could have been executed by Belle & Sebastian Mach I. Many date the resurrection of the band to Murdoch's breakup, or to "Your Cover's Blown", or to the ass-kicking Trevor Horn evidently administered on all seven of their behinds. Me, I think B&S guaranteed themselves longevity when they traded in Stuart David for a bassist who could keep up with Murdoch's taste for cheese. Maybe they're not the best band in the world. But then maybe they are.

 

Beth Orton -- "Shopping Trolley"
The Orton who can stand shoulder-to-shoulder with classic British folksingers is not a figment of William Orbit's imagination -- just check out her Tabor-iffic performances on the new Bert Jansch album. Unfortunately, that version of Orton very rarely appears on her own records. With "Shopping Trolley", Orton falls back on that yellow-bus-riding delivery that ruined Daybreaker. For all that, it's a pretty enjoyable track; definitely the standout cut on her latest set. Her lyrics are, as always, vague to the point of new-age silliness, so it's probably for the best that she slurs them all.

 

Beyoncé -- "Ring The Alarm", "Irreplaceable", "Déjà Vu" (w/ Jay-Z)
I told myself I'd go easier this year, and six entries in, I've already called Beth Orton retarded. Like, wow. I guess the elections didn't improve my disposition. All I can say is that if you're looking for the kindly Tris McCall, you'd best be skipping ahead to The Early November. Now, I'm a huge Rich Nice fan, but I didn't go as ga-ga over "Crazy In Love" as the rest of the multiverse did, mostly because I felt Jay-Z's verse scaled new heights of unjustified arrogance. Never one to disguise the marketing plan, Knowles brings back the Jigga Man for the appropriately-titled "Déjà Vu". This time out, he's rusty but game to show that he's still got some skills left, and he wins points for referencing Juan Pierre in his opening couplet. But Knowles sounds much more convincing on "Irreplaceable", a song about how Jay-Z sucks nowadays. Hell, I could have told her that back when they were both doing "'03 Bonnie And Clyde".

 

B.G. -- "Move Around"
The first of many Katrina-Can't-Stop-Us numbers from notable Nolia and St. Bernard rappers. The sad part about this is that it's pretty common knowledge that B.G. has relocated to Detroit. Here's the white-flag couplet, straight from the Baby Gangster himself: "New Orleans gone, yeah, New Orleans fucked/ but wherever we go, you gotta deal with us." Production comes straight from Mannie Fresh's giant garden of beats. It's nice to see that wasn't washed away in the flood.

 

Big City Rock -- "All Of The Above"
Actual lyrical hook from actual rock song released by actual major label: "Do you wanna rock?/ Do you wanna roll?/ Do you wanna get down on the dance floor?/ All of the above!" Somebody's retaken the SATs once too many times.

 

Birdman & Lil Wayne -- "Stuntin' Like My Daddy"
I'll admit I haven't paid much attention to this one, and it's not because of the well-aired controversy over their (ahem) relationship. Better that Baby and Weezy F. Baby have sex with each other, since it's hard to want to wish them on anybody else. Now, some consider it creepy that Wayne continues to refer to Williams as his "daddy", even while admitting in interviews that they habitually kiss on the lips, but, jeez, people, this is the era of the Internet; fantasies like that are positively tame. As long as they're happy, right?, and, more importantly, off the market. Now, no matter how much of a jerk he was to some of my favorite emcees and producers, I still find Baby's rapping enjoyable in limited doses. Weezy is one of the very best vocalists on the planet right now, and always a pleasure to hear. But with Dedication Vol. 2 out through Amazon, singles from the second Carter still kicking around the charts, and the third Carter coming, I really did not see a need to pick up the Wayne and Baby duets album. If Wayne really wants to turn Cash Money into a vanity imprint, that's his prerogative, I guess, even if it is a sorry end for one of the most reliable franchises in the entertainment industry and yet another sad metaphor for the evacuation of New Orleans. No, what I can't stomach anymore are the video clips, since both of these guys are now tattooed to the point of disfigurement. Weezy F Baby, will you please put on a fucking shirt? Nobody wants to see your gross-me-out chest; especially not the Bloods who now want to cap you for that M.O.B. tattoo that you apparently did not earn the hard way. (Then again, they ought to be smart enough to figure out what it really stands for: Madisonavenue Or Bust.) You can call yourself El Presidente all you want, but Cash Money isn't going to survive if you keep making us change the channel.

 

Bird York -- "In The Deep"
So let me get this straight: the racist cop gets to be the hero and have the most intimate scene with the black woman, while the partner who criticized him turns out to be the villain. We are asked to identify with the black woman as she drops her objections to her mistreatment in the face of mortal peril, and then we have to watch as she essentially makes out with the heroic racist cop while her emasculated black husband tools through Los Angeles like a dork. Meanwhile, Ludacris is running around carjacking people. This is an Academy Award-winning statement about race relations in 2006? I think Ice Cube had better take another trip/ out to the sub-urbs.

 

Blink-182 -- "The Adventure", "When Your Heart Stops Beating"
Man, I hate this band. Every time I hear a pop-punk song that sounds like it exists only to make you really wish you were listening to Green Day instead, it turns out to be Blink-182. They've been around for long enough that they've got their own saga now, including several spin-offs and side-projects that nobody cares about. Those songs up there were actually released by the side-projects, but I'll be damned if they're going to make me go look up the names of their new bands. Just because they can't stand each other doesn't mean they've suddenly attained the ability to sound like anything other than their crappy selves.

 

Bruce Springsteen -- "Pay Me My Money Down"
Turns out Pete Seeger, Yung Joc, Mos Def, and Henry Hill from Goodfellas have more in common than you'd think: they all say "fuck you, pay me". It just rolls off the tongue. Many folk songs are, at base, "fuck you, pay me": I've heard versions of "Day-O" where Harry Belafonte is singing about the tarantulas in the bananas. Props to The Boss for pointing out how perennial this stuff is, even if nobody needs the dolo less than he does.

 

Bubba Sparxxx & The Ying Yang Twins -- "Ms. New Booty"
Mr. Collipark strikes again. The most underrated producer in hip-hop must face the hate from Ghostface and Game and other cold-weather emcees who look at Hotlanta and wonder what the hell is going on down there. Luckily he is a hero on the homefront, and for good reason -- should you want to lace some booty rhymes over a track (as all Atlantans do), he will provide you with one that bumps like no tomorrow. He will also figure out how to properly use the Ying Yang Twins on your track, which is like handling an unstable radioactive element that can either power up your building or blast it into the next county. On "Ms. New Booty", the Twins scream "booty booty booty booty rocking everywhere" in something not unlike two-part harmony, and the effect is authoritative. You, the listener, really do feel at that moment like booty is rocking everywhere, and likely it is. Bubba Sparxxx has something rude to say to the strippers, too, but who really cares what?

 

Busta Rhymes -- "Touch It", "In The Ghetto", "New York Shit"
Hang on, we're almost to the letter C; once we get there, we'll be on a roll like a cheesesteak from Geno's. There'll be wiz wit, too. (That's a little Philly humor, to which I'm not entitled at all, but some clown up on Girard is smirking now, and that's good enough for me.) In other news, Busta Rhymes is still putting out records. If you missed that, it's hard to blame you: I tried to miss it myself. In recent years Busta's music has become as crummy and gimmicky as rap gets, which, to be fair, is still not all that bad. During a brief moment of true cultural insanity, Busta was considered a sex symbol; "Touch It" is Swizz Beats's attempt to squeeze the last bit of juice out of that delusion. "In The Ghetto" the aggressively average hustler anthem, and "New York Shit" is most notable for its list of shout-outs. Nothing new in the bibliography, but it's always comforting to hear Chuck Chillout and DJ Jazzy Joyce mentioned on hit radio. Oh, he also cut an embarrassing gangsta-boo single with Kelis, but we'll just pretend that one never happened.

 

Buzzcocks -- "Wish I Never Loved You"
Purists will tell you that true emo began and ended in the D.C. hardcore scene in the Eighties, and that all the subsequent radio-punk groups who took their cues from SDRE and Mineral are, in fact, big phonies. Obviously, Dashboard Confessional shares more with Avril Lavigne than they do with Rites Of Spring. But it's still an unpersuasive argument, because it doesn't take into consideration the strange and perverse ways that influence works. For instance, how come nobody ever blames the Buzzcocks for emo? In a context -- Britain '78 -- where the only suitable topics for punk songs were nihilism and social unrest, Pete Shelley and company dropped "Ever Fallen In Love" and "What Do I Get?" Skinny guys hollering about romantic failures and interpersonal frustrations over catchy major-chord pop-punk -- that's not a recognizable style to you? It seems to me that the Buzzcocks had more influence over the state of the current mySpace rock underground than Fugazi, Weezer, and Jimmy Eat World put together. Okay, maybe not Jimmy Eat World; those bones have been picked over clean. "Wish I Never Loved You" and the rest of Flat-Pack Philosophy might sound superficially old-school and old-world, but if you look at the template, you can see how up-to-date it is.

 

Cadillac Don & J-Money -- "Peanut Butter & Jelly"
Backpackers await the punk rock of hip-hop: the back-to-basics movement that tosses all the bling onto the bonfire and torches it, Savonarola-style. Me, I always say that flossing is the fundament, and that's why exporting rap to countries with a vexed relationship to class mobility is a tricky proposition. Truth is, MySpace and YouTube have done plenty to undermine the top-down structure of the rap industry already, and as these technologies spread, the decentralization and democratization are only going to become more extreme. Fatalistic bloggers and journalists like to point to hip-hop's crappy sales numbers this year and suggest that the genre is on the ropes. But that's just half the story. In '06, Cadillac Don and J-Money could flip their jam on social-networking sites and create the kind of small-scale regional hysteria that we haven't seen in rap music since the Eighties. Never mind that we'll never hear from them again: they're just one piece of a larger puzzle. Because hip-hop is returning to its roots -- it's becoming more local, more particular, cheaper-sounding, more exciting. Whether the subject matter changes to suit regional tastes is another question altogether; "Peanut Butter & Jelly" suggests that the cars+rims+stunners=girls+respect equation -- which is as old as rock and roll itself, and surely even older -- isn't going anywhere. Nor should it.

 

Camera Obscura -- "Lloyd, I'm Ready To Be Heartbroken", "Let's Get Out Of This Country"
Coy indie kids kick automobile lyrics, too. Stuart Murdoch makes a big deal out of his support for public transit (I feel him there), but still sings "I Love My Car" with minimal irony. "Let's Get Out Of This Country" is "Legal Man" upgraded and sweetened: Tracyanne Campbell singing about the only remedy she knows for her now-legendary discontent. "Let's hit the road, friend of mine/ wave goodbye to our thankless jobs/ drive for hours and never turn off." Chuck Berry and his cream-colored Cadillac couldn't have driven it home any straighter. Some of this stuff is just elemental, and it doesn't matter if you're a Carol City hustler or a tweepop girl from Glasgow.

 

Cassie -- "Me & U"
I can't speak for you, but it's been some years since I've heard a Bad Boy single as straight-up niiiiice as this one. I'm sure Mario Winans would have given his corporate overseers both nuts and an ass-cheek for a beat like this, or just a synth-orchestral sample this stark and menacing. The singer does her best to maintain the mood by refraining from melisma and singing with that single-minded and predatory determination that only a young ingenue primping for the club can generate. Cassie's just a kid in the hands of some ruthless entrepreneurs who've put some filthy come-ons in that pouty mouth of hers, but I doubt she's complaining too much, though she fought back when a racy and (allegedly) unauthorized video hit the 'net. Then again, there aren't that many ways to interpret lines like "baby, I'll love you all the way down/ get you right where you like it/ it's our secret thang". Just go with it, I say.

 

Cham & Alicia Keys -- "Ghetto Story"
Earnest and intermittently likeable Ja-fakin' bozo rounds up his famous friend for a game of by-the-numbers inner-city hardship storytelling. I don't really believe Alicia Keys has a "ghetto story", either, except maybe for that time her dad's SUV broke down on the way to the Professional Performing Arts School. But if we all now have to pretend that The Game is an actual gang member -- rather than a reality-show contestant with a big mouth -- we can probably afford to give Keys a flier, too.

 

Chamillionaire -- "Grown And Sexy","Ridin'" (w/ Krayzie Bone)
And so it came to pass that the most vivid lyric ever written about the cat-and-mouse game played on city streets between the po-po and local stunners came not from Compton or from Harlem, but from Houston, Texas. The former Color Changing Click partner drops the third certifiable H-Town classic in less than a year, the biggest-selling, and the one most likely to have registered some kind of impression on your mom, dad, and Uncle Weird Al. Ever the rationalist emcee, Chamillionaire explains his tinted windows and why it's necessary to roll with a gun, and stops to complain about the 40 on his lap in the driver's seat that's freezing his balls. Cops irritate him because they're jealous of his wealth, but as much as he likes to see their faces when they can't pin a rap on him, you can tell he's scared of their power. How far can he push?, and how much can he flaunt?, swanging through Acres Homes, DJ Screw on full volume, while Officer O'Malley fingers his nightstick. Girls drop straight out of the scenario as Chamillionaire conflates the thrill of escaping arrest with the sexual release he's out prowling for. He's not a mack because of the chicks blowing up his beeper, he's a mack because he's screwed the cops, or maybe because the cops have screwed him. They're watching, he's watching, he's hiding coyly behind shades, he's dirty, they're dirty; they all desperately want something.

 

Chingy -- "Pullin' Me Back"
Replacement-level emcees aren't supposed to stick around this long. It's all been downhill since "Right Thurr", but that gradient wasn't too steep to begin with. I mean, why doesn't J-Kwon get another radio song instead? Hell, Lady Sovereign liked the chorus of "Tipsy" enough to rip it off for the Euro market; I doubt anybody would ever bother to do the same for any of these Nelly-lite numbers.

 

Chris Brown -- "Yo", "Gimme That" (w/ Lil Wayne)
Usher, Ne-Yo, Chris Brown, and Omarion are all basically the same guy. In a blind-label taste test, most educated consumers are going to select Usher, but that's just because he stole all his vocal moves straight from MJ. I'm not sure the talent differential really justifies his higher profile, but then he's always had the ace tracks to work with. Coming into 2006, I had Chris Brown second on the depth chart, but Ne-Yo sorta blew by him on the strength of superior material and his underappreciated guest shot on Fishscale. Again, it's not really a matter of ability, but as it's a safe bet that there are more where these guys came from, Brown had better start making some moves. Nobody wants to get stuck on the bench behind a player with comparable skills; just ask Casey Kotchman how that's working out for him.

 

Christina Aguilera -- "Ain't No Other Man", "Hurt"
These are fine songs, and they also suggest a healthy awareness of the depression-era-jazz mania that's currently sweeping through the singer-songwriter underground. Still, I have to ask: why is this woman trying so hard? Every note is sung with lunatic abandon. Every vocal passage includes forty thousand twists and turns. Each chorus is more desperately whomped up than the last. Now, I dig music that goes straight over the top, but there's not much joy or campy satisfaction in what she does; instead, it seems like she's perpetually singing for her life, afraid of boring the monarch for a split-second. Dances of the Seven Veils are exhausting, and Aguilera is wearing herself out. She passed the audition almost a decade ago with "Genie In A Bottle". She's proven to us that she can sing; she doesn't need to reassure us every time she opens her mouth. I don't really care about the personal lives of pop stars, but if I was asked to name a few singers who appeared to have serious psychological problems, my list would begin with Christina Aguilera.

 

Christina Milian -- "Say I" (w/ Young Jeezy)
Here's your counter-example, as Milian can barely sing at all. She's a model and an actress who probably got her record deal as a personal favor to somebody's uncle. Still, she trusts her production, and saves up what few fireworks she has for her chorus. I could have done without Jeezy's hijack job halfway through the cut, but the company paymasters probably felt they needed to gussy up the track a little. They should have saved their money, shaved a minute off of the mix, and left it at that. Anybody can carry a two-minute pop song. You don't need to get a reality show winner to do it; you could pull the next pretty face off of the street.

 

Ciara -- "Promise", "Get Up" (w/ Chamillionaire)
Then again, it helps to have a range greater than two notes. Ciara does not. I have been complaining about her melodic limitations for three years now, but it doesn't seem to be bothering anybody but me. My sneaking suspicion is that everybody in "her" audience has heard the rumors about how "she" is privately a man, and they're waiting for the gotcha moment where "she" slips up and the old dong comes bouncing out. It's an excellent marketing strategy, since it gives her an alibi for her voice (hormone treatments) and it helps deflect attention from her increasingly flaccid material. These aren't the worst R&B tracks of the year, but they are among the most uninspired. Worse still, I can't imagine anybody dancing to these. But then I used to feel the same way about Madonna, and I'm pretty sure she's an actual woman.

 

Clipse -- "Mr. Me Too", "Wamp Wamp (What It Do)" (w/Slim Thug)
For a cocaine hustler to be successful, there must be a sufficient number of crack addicts out there to keep demand, um, high. And apparently there are; otherwise, pushers would have to resort to making rap records in order to put food on the table. In "Get Ya Hustle On", Juve recommends that everybody in New Orleans begin selling crack, or, as he puts it "er'body need a check from FEMA/ so he can go and score him some co-ca-INA". You smirk, but it's a better plan than anything we've heard out of the government so far. Still, it goes against natural marketplace limits, because who are they supposed to sell to, dudes from Baton Rouge? Tourists and contractors hanging out in the French Quarter? Emcees will, out of one side of their mouths, say that all the crack talk is just a metaphor for getting ahead by any means necessary, and then insist that they logged serious time hustling on the corner. But all these guys couldn't have sold crack, could they have? It beggars belief. And audiences don't believe; otherwise, songs like "Mr. Me Too" wouldn't have the force that they do. Think of a diss record; chances are, some lines in there question the target's authenticity as a cocaine dealer. My best guess is that "Mr. Me Too" is about Lil Wayne, but it could really be about anybody with a colorful backstory that, upon close inspection, seems like it could have been scripted by the folks who write The Wire. The Clipse are superior emcees, but you wouldn't know who they were if they hadn't built a convincing public case that their drug-dealing stories are true. Since they're the latest rappers who genuinely scare us, they get the sales, and the raves in mainstream publications -- Hell Hath No Fury gets called "chilling", and "menacing", and "grim", and these are all positives, superlatives even. Malice and Pusha T may or may not have been hustling bricks, but they're smart enough to know the way the game is played: if they can cast doubt over the stories told by their peers, they invalidate their competition. This is what happened to Ja Rule. He wasn't defeated in a rhyme battle or even proven a liar -- 50 Cent threw enough of a shadow over his thug-cred that he no longer frightens anybody. As long as American audiences continue to respond like this, it's hard to blame emcees for saying the things they say, and maybe even for doing the things they do.

 

Cobra Starship -- "Snakes On A Plane (Bring It)"
Looking back, it's hard to believe it even happened the way it did. Then again, in 2006, New Line were hardly the only ones who mistook weblog hysteria for serious enthusiasm. Folks, I hope we've all learned Thing #1 about American politics and 'net hype, and that we can all move on from here as better-informed web citizens.

 

Corinne Bailey Rae -- "Put Your Records On"
An intersection exists between R&B and indiepop, and a few brave performers are out there swinging for it. One day soon, one of them will hit the piñata, and that'll mean candy for everyone. Corinne Bailey Rae is nearly precious enough, but her problems with enunciation hold her back; also, she can't quite decide if she wants to go after Norah Jones's audience or chase after the transatlantic hipster crew. She's easy to root for, and she's the rare pop star who'd turn your head if you saw her on the street, but the songs so far have been underwritten. You might set her up with a real band, rather than a ProTools rig and a platoon of engineers, and see what happened. But for now, tweepop nation deserves a better diva, and vice versa.

 

Daddy Yankee -- "Rompe"
On last year's Critics Poll, a few of you jokers predicted that reggaeton would be the biggest trend of '06. For a few weeks, I thought "Rompe" was the track that would make it happen. Instead, it became the song that every Latino leadoff hitter in the bigs used as their psych-up music; for a few months there, it supplanted "play ball" as the de facto opening of baseball games. Beyond that, it failed to penetrate mainstream American consciousness, and it didn't even duplicate the success of "Gasolina". The next single will determine if he's got something to contribute or if he's just the new Rico Suave.

 

Daniel Powter -- "Bad Day"
George Orwell defined a "dead metaphor" as a figure of speech where the image no longer signifies anything. In other words, we might talk about a "last-ditch effort", but we don't visualize the motte and bailey as we do. For Daniel Powter, a dead metaphor is something to build a pop song lyric with. Here, he gives us blue skies fading to grey, lives falling to pieces, cameras that don't lie, the system going on the blink; all during the course of one frothy adult-contemporary cut. Now, Powter's objective may have been to write a song without signification, since he recognizes that adult humans don't want to do any more thinking than they have to. If so, then "Bad Day" must be considered some kind of sick success. Freedom = Slavery on commercial radio.

 

Danity Kane -- "Show Stopper"
There are at least five of them, which ought to strike you as odd right off the bat: singing groups already push it when they try to go with four. They're all poorly individuated on "Showstopper", which features the type of superprocessed gang vocals that don't correspond to any known number of human voices. There could be five hundred girl singers on the chorus, or there could be one, run through some kind of extreme phasing effect secreted away in a Hollywood vault. Those in the know inform me that Danity Kane was assembled by audience vote on one reality show or another. I didn't watch the program, but that might explain the unwieldy cast: one of these women might have found an immunity idol, or won a reward challenge, or gotten to bring back a member of the jury when the tribes merged. In the future, pop music really will be a gaming activity, and heaven help the singing group who tries to stand against the tide of direct democracy.

 

Dem Franchize Boyz -- "Lean Wit It, Rock Wit It"
"Better make up a dance and try to get radio play"; that's The Game on "One Blood", calling out snap music in general and the Franchize Boyz in particular. But he's got it backward, or will soon: in '06, rappers didn't invent the dances, their fans did. Or, rather, the rappers came up with the rough templates, and then thousands of kids across the country helped to spread the popularity of the song by posting their own self-choreographed interpretations on YouTube. Welcome to the immediate future of music: something that looks a lot like the pre-British Invasion Sixties. The Twist and the Peppermint Shake and the Mashed Potato and the rest of it were regional records at first, too, spread by teen-girl mimicry from dance floor to dance floor, and the 1960s versions of The Game had the same dismissive things to say about those records. But bandwidth has finally caught up to demand, and now a crucial visual component that was stolen from pop music in the late Sixties has been re-introduced. "Chicken Noodle Soup" could not have happened without YouTube and digital-video file-sharing. This'll make many of you rage against Moore's Law; me, I say let a thousand private Soul Trains bloom.

 

Diddy -- "Come To Me" (w/ Nicole Scherzinger)
So where does that leave the pop superstars? In the same place they've always been in, probably; only they're going to have to cope with declining record sales from now until the End of Music. Puffy's Play got strong reviews -- he even managed to convince Nas to rhyme on it. If "Come To Me" had been released in '98, it would have topped the charts; eight years removed from the pinnacle of hip-hop mass marketing, it feels weirdly out of time. We're all waiting for the New York corporate-rap response to Southern supremacy and wondering what shape it'll take when it finally slams home, but you can be sure of this: it doesn't involve better mastering, or a cleaner, more processed sound.

 

DJ Khaled, Kanye West, & Consequence -- "The Grammy Family"
Even Kanye-haters have to admit: the guy is good to his friends and true to his city. 'Ye gave Rhymefest a career for no reason other than loyalty, revived Common, saved John Legend from a decade of crooning to overweight housewives on "neo-soul" radio, provided a platform for Lupe, and rescued Consequence from total obscurity. You can't point to another kingpin (and West, refreshingly, doesn't think of himself as a business mogul) who has done more for his crew in the last few years. "The Grammy Family" is just a throwaway, really, but it's an entertaining one that flips a neat sample, and both emcees are in good form. Quence sounds reinvigorated now that he's got evidence that other humans care who the hell he is, but it's the Man Called West who gets off my favorite line: "I'm stuntin' out in the middle of nowhere, like Vegas". If you've ever flown into McCarran on a clear day, you know what he means.

 

Dr. Octagon -- "Aliens", "Trees"
More fun dumbness from the grandmaster of pseudo-literate mumbo-jumbo. But that's why we love him, or tolerate him, or whatever. "Trees" is the political statement; turns out Keith is against destroying the earth, because where else is he going to find suckers who'll put out his incomprehensible albums, or stoned white men who'll give them positive notices? "Aliens" is just pure amusing nonsense: he kicks something that feels a little like a verse, and then he lets One Watt Sun cut the track into shreds and throw in some spazzy Germanic samples. There's even a completely unnecessary speed-up that'll delight those who are high on marijuana. In other words, all of Keith's listeners.

Eagles Of Death Metal -- "I Want You So Hard (Boy's Bad News)"
Two years ago, the Eagles put out a garage rock stomper called "I Only Want You". It was pretty decent: Jesse Haines's vocal had a nice menacing smoothness to it, sorta like Akon but not really, and Josh Homme of QOTSA fame turned out to be exactly the sort of drummer you'd think he'd be. Now, the duo is back with "I Want You So Hard", which as far as I can tell is the same exact song as "I Only Want You", only where Haines used to say "I only want you", he now says "the boy's bad news". I know that people who listen to this sort of stuff do not demand much in the way of variation, but you'd think that musicians of this caliber would get bored hammering out the same riffs over and over. Beer is an astonishing thing.

 

Evanescence -- "Call Me When You're Sober"
Admit it, you didn't think they'd be back, either. No metal-rapper on this one, just Amy Lee complaining about a bad boyfriend. Pretty much exactly what you think it is.

 

Fergie -- "London Bridge", "Fergielicious"
The Black Eyed Peas are like ballplayers who you don't really want on your team, but there they are anyway, and they keep getting hits, so you have to put up with them. And then suddenly the manager is telling everybody that they've become integral parts of the lineup, and the GM is rewarding them with long contracts, and you're forced to either root for them or switch allegiances. The stupidly-named will.i.am has apparently decided he's a big-time producer, and strangely enough, people seem to be going along with this and hiring him for high-profile cuts. (Strangest rap moment of '06: The Game praising Will and the Black Eyed Peas in "Compton"; he even calls them "ruthless".) Meanwhile, Fergie bucked all kinds of odds by putting out two singles that, while murderously annoying, aren't half bad. "London Bridge" sounds like the song that the Spice Girls were trying to write for Spiceworld: it's crude, idiotic, sexually desperate, and wholly undeniable. Great beat, too.

 

Fields -- "Song For The Fields"
Not to be confused with Field Music, these four Brits and an Icelander turned a nifty trick in '06: they made a big-sounding rock record that owed next to nothing to Radiohead or U2. The alleged inspiration for "Song From The Fields" was The Pentangle, CSN, and tracks from the original Wicker Man soundtrack; to me, it's more like Ride circa Carnival Of Light. That's a very good thing, by the way.

 

Ghostface -- "Back Like That"
Everybody's favorite Wu emcee came back in '06 with his latest album to be called his best since Ironman, and look out, folks!, there's another one on the way. While GZA and Raekwon slowly piece together their rumored new joints, Tony Starks drops new material every time somebody blinks. Ghost wins points for throwing MF Doom production alongside tracks by Pete Rock on Fishscale and somehow making it all cohere. Well, to be fair, some of the Doom songs feel unfocused; at least they do until Ghostface opens his mouth and begins storytelling. "Back Like That" was his umpteenth attempt at an actual pop hit, and it didn't do much better on the charts than his last few, but at least we were spared the raunchy Missy Elliott cameo. It's the story of a man who has sex with a woman who isn't his girl, then discovers that his girl has retaliated by giving a blowjob to one of his enemies, and finds himself going batshit in their apartment and threatening to do all kinds of crazy things, including: running people over with his car, cutting off his woman's ring finger, and convincing his "girl cousins" to administer a beatdown in his name. Yup, this one had TRL written all over it.

 

Gnarls Barkley -- "Crazy"
Just like Cher, if I could turn back time, I would find a way to bet money that Cee-Lo would eventually have a hit single. I knew this for sure, since every time I'd play the Goodie Mob for any of my friends, all of whom are record-collecting squares and "tastemakers", they'd ignore the music until Cee-Lo started singing. Then they'd be like "who is this guy, and why can't he do the entire album?" Well, Cee-Lo did do an entire album; two, in fact, and despite the fact that he sang his head off on both, you don't know either of them. It took Danger Mouse to discipline him and to pin him down to V-C-V structure, and this, my friends, turned out to be the magic formula. "Crazy" also has an ultra-thin bass sound that contrasts with everything else on the radio these days, some old-time string arrangements that could have been ripped off of a Curtis Mayfield album, and a sweet minor-key melody laced over one of the most reliable root-dropping chord progressions in rock history. It's also mercifully brief. Good song, and very solid performance by Cee-Lo, but probably a little bit overrated at this point. The most likely single cut to go all "Hey Ya!" on the '06 Critics Poll.

 

Grafh -- "Myspace Jumpoff"
Rappers are generous people. If you do a rapper a solid, you could well be immortalized tomorrow in the shout-out section of a radio cut. You can't expect the same from New Found Glory, do you know what I mean? Likewise, the Fueled By Ramen kids are happy to use MySpace and Insound to pitch their tracks, but you'll never catch them singing about adding friends or tweaking their profiles. Grafh, on the other hand, is a funny-looking emcee with a clutch of bad pickup lines -- the sort of guy with no chance whatsoever of landing a deal with a major, or any deal at all. But he's got a chorus with a hook, and a MySpace page, and in 2006, that's enough. (He's also fond of saying "boingggg!", which certainly works for me.) Like the current DIY pop-punk movement, the "mySpace Jumpoff" single could not have happened without social-networking technology, and the rapper returns the favor by delivering what is in effect a three-minute commercial for the site. He even gives out his URL, and spells his name, just in case you're mystified by consonant clusters. The future: there's no way to stop it, so you may as well embrace it.

 

Gwen Stefani -- "Wind It Up"
Now the Neptunes have her yodeling. Worse yet, when she isn't yodeling, she's rapping. It's kind of a trip, I guess, and it's nice to see she's still down for any challenge her producers might want to throw at her. But sometimes I think that Pharrell Williams and Chad Hugo are treating her solo career as a big game of "how far can we push the white girl?" Hey, guys, she rolls with Eve. She's never going to cry uncle.

 

Hard-Fi -- "Cash Machine", "Hard To Beat"
Broke, angry Brits from the dead-end London suburbs rip off Duran Duran by way of Daft Punk. Much better than anything on that first Killers album. I'm afraid they're getting lost in the dance-rock shuffle, but they're tougher than any of their peers, and they've even developed some lyrical bite. I hope they stick around.

 

hellogoodbye -- "Here (In Your Arms)"
Or, what would happen if we took away Johnny Poppunk's guitar and replaced it with a cheap MIDI-controlled wavestation synth? I know, Reggie and the Full Effect beat them to it. But they never had choruses this catchy, or a singer quite as obnoxious and instantly identifiable. The funny thing about hellogoodbye (and Reggie, too) is that although they don't "rock", per se, there's never a moment when their utterly synthetic compositions sound like anything other than the frothy corporate-rock currently in vogue. Consider this data point #4080 in my ongoing argument that treble instruments are interchangeable. In a perfect world, Drive-Thru Records wouldn't even be bothering with this; they'd be concentrating all their resources on getting The Early November's triple album the attention it deserves. This is the sound of a not-so-perfect world.

 

Immaculate Machine -- "Broken Ship", "So Cynical"
This Canadian indiepop band is just a bunch of chipper kids straight out of collich, but boy, can they ever play those axes: pianist Kathryn Calder (late of the New Pornographers) covers the bottom end with her left hand so well that you'll never notice that they don't have a bassist. She sings with a note-perfect, milk-pure delivery that suggests what Katie Sketch would sound like if somebody sprung her from the Morrissey cult and gave her a year's worth of deprogramming. Guitarist Brook Gallupe's hiccuppy voice takes a little longer to get used to, but when they harmonize, you'd swear they'd been practicing together since grade school. Maybe they have been.

 

James Blunt -- "You're Beautiful"
There is a special place in hell for people who refuse to let Weird Al parody their songs. Eminem, make room in the inferno for James Blunt.

 

Jay-Z -- "Show Me What You Got"
Pathetic, embarrassing, he ethered himself on his own cut, etc., etc. You've heard it all by now, and I'll try to resist the urge to pile on, even if I am starting to think of Mr. Carter as the biggest villain in pop music for pushing back the new Nas album to bring us this pile of poop. To be fair, Kingdom Come isn't quite as bad as you've heard, and only a hopeless otaku could have expected Jigga to come back hard after hanging with Barbara Walters and Gwyneth Paltrow. He previewed "Show Me What You Got" in a damned car commercial during the World Series, for Pete's sake. His flow sounds every bit as rusty as you feared it might, and I see the time off did not cure Jay's celebrity-stalker-type obsession, either. First he gets a girl drunk, then he convinces himself that she's in the "zone", then he flashes to the 2-3 zone, and that reminds him of the number on the back of the real object of his affection. All free-association leads back to the United Center for this guy; I mean, here he's is about to get some, and he's sitting there fixated on fucking Michael Jordan. Do you want your boyfriend acting like this? Beyoncé must be a very special woman.

 

Jenny Lewis & The Watson Twins -- "Rise Up With Fists"
All the reviews of Rabbit Fur Coat have been the same: good performances, poor lyrics. Internet groupthink being what it is, you'd figure that everybody's just copying off of Pitchfork. Still, I wish they'd cut it out and actually listen to the record. Lewis's lyrics aren't good, they're very good; she's funny and playful, and she's not asking for everything out of her mouth to be taken seriously. She's got some ideas about Las Vegas, and what that's all about, and gambling, and spirituality, and the desert, and American artifice and social-climbing and the blurry line between anti-social behavior and the transcendent. Lewis doesn't hit you over the head with any of this stuff, though; she just sorta cracks wise and makes leading comments, and lets you drift into her universe at your own pace. But even if she was singing "Kumbaya", you'd still want to listen to this track for the backing vocals, which are straight butter.

 

Jibbs -- "Chain Hang Low"
Not everybody looks at this new 'net-driven, grass-roots rap music and smiles about it. XXL's infamous Byron Crawford raised some hell about "Chain Hang Low" in particular, correctly pointing out that its chorus was a reinterpretation of "Zip Coon", an old minstrel show standard. (Ironically, this paralleled another 2006 'net dispute -- in a completely unrelated incident, Sasha Frere-Jones also called out the stridently apolitical Stephin Merritt for blithely praising "Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah" in an interview.) Several poker-faced columnists -- including one in the Daily News, of all places -- picked up on Crawford's post about "minstrel rap", and used it to launch back into the now-hoary jag about the alleged ignorance of Southern emcees. According to this argument, the major imprints have been racing each other to set up the most 'coon-like, stepinfetchitesque rappers possible as unwitting participants in a new minstrel show. Crawford sees "Chicken Noodle Soup" and the much-maligned "Laffy Taffy" as further examples of the trend; he and the other columnists who ran with the idea strongly implied that rap labels had orchestrated the Southern takeover to gut hip-hop of its social significance and embarrass blacks. Well. I'm not black and Crawford is, so if he's embarrassed by Jibbs, I'm nobody to tell him not to be. Certainly Jibbs will not strike anybody as a Rhodes Scholar. But it's not clear to me whether Jibbs or his producers recognized "Zip Coon" as a minstrel show song, or even whether they recognized the melody as that of "Zip Coon". Most Americans know it as "Turkey In The Straw" or "Do Your Balls Hang Low", if they know it at all, and Jibbs's audience -- which is young, self-selected and web-driven -- almost certainly did not recognize the melody as a minstrel show number. So if the kids who made "Chain Hang Low" an enormous Internet hit didn't catch the association with "Zip Coon", then how is the song part of a larger social-engineering project? The point isn't that we ought to ignore the contextual history of melodies: that's about the last thing I'd ever argue. It's that the songs that Crawford and others have called "minstrel rap" are, in fact, the exact ones that weren't initially chosen by suits at major labels for promotion and dissemination. They're the songs that excited teens and pre-teens on file-sharing and social-networking websites. "Chicken Noodle Soup", "Vans", "Chain Hang Low", "MySpace Jumpoff"; these songs would never have been national hits if it were up to the major labels alone. The industry blueprint for '06 involved you the consumer buying Lloyd Banks and Puffy and the rest of the big budget corporate-rap releases that have been stuffing outboxes for several quarters. The plan only changed because the companies were losing their shirts on these albums. Execs began chasing regional favorites and Internet sensations because the playing field has changed, and that's where the action is. This isn't a conspiracy; on the contrary, it's what pop music looks like when you start removing the gatekeepers. If, to some, the result looks like a minstrel show, the problem isn't with the rappers, it's with the human beings who bookmarked, tagged, and otherwise "favorited" this material. From here, it's possible to launch into a long argument about internalized racism and years of domination and false-consciousness, and, again, I'm hardly in a position to tell my black readership (ha, yes, ha) not to object to these representations. But I do think it's also possible that these songs aren't pernicious at all: that the purpose of pop music isn't to raise consciousness or to be representative of the better angels of our nature, or even to be particularly responsible, but instead to capture in sounds a certain time and place, feelings and impressions, and to communicate those to other listeners. On this score, I believe Jibbs did a good job: "Chain Hang Low" sounds like 2006, and another door creaking open on the new direct democracy. The strange thing about Byron Crawford's objection to this song and to the trend it represents is that he's a shock blogger by trade: he owes his (deservedly) high profile in the hip-hop world not to any authority, but to a self-selected audience that visits his personal site. They come because Crawford is witty and astute -- but also because he regularly makes outrageous sexist, homophobic, and otherwise discriminatory remarks that would never be allowed in a mainstream publication. The thrill of that transgression is part of his point, but it's not one that Time Magazine is going to countenance, do you know what I'm saying? In other words, Crawford was created by the same grassroots-democratic forces that made "Chain Hang Low" a hit: a group of Internet enthusiasts who linked to his site and referred it to others on the 'net. I don't see the problem with Crawford's rise (though I understand why squeamish characters do), and I don't have an issue with the direct determination of pop hits by audiences, either. Both are expressions of public will made possible by new mediums. As the algorithms on the 'net gets better at determining what people want, we're going to see more and more of this -- more Byron Crawfords, more Jibbs, more chicken noodle soup with a soda on the side. Like it or not, in the future, everything is going to be popularly elected, Neilson-rated, and click-counted; actually, it's oddballs like me who are going to end up getting screwed. But at least I'll have songs like "Chain Hang Low" to entertain me as I'm being constantly outvoted.

Jim Jones -- "We Fly High"
But then I couldn't be further from Byron Crawford if I tried. He is famous for hating on popular hip-hop records, and he's actually been criticized by his fanbase for praising certain indie rock acts (he likes Bloc Party and The New Pornographers). I'm a 140-pound white guy who loves rap music to distraction. Crawford would probably look at me and see part of the problem: an elitist college-educated scumbag making apologies for the ignorance and the ahistoricity of others. (Or just a queer.) I'm open to the argument that my extreme enthusiasm for this music is indicative of flaws in my character. But it does not necessarily follow that the music is bad. I mean, I can hear the PMRC objection to Jim Jones right now: he's promoting an unhealthy lifestyle! He's obsessed with material wealth! He's, well, he's an asshole! And while all of those objections are technically accurate, it doesn't really matter. Jim Jones's job isn't to be the man you want him to be, or the man I want him to be; his job is to follow his passions and impressions wherever they happen to take him and to report back to us along the way. Never mind that by almost any ethical standard, his stance and attitude are evil: if his storytelling is colorful enough, and his arguments are persuasive enough, he'll be able to create a genuine experience that we can inhabit if we wish. Now, I don't listen to rap music because I identify with the emcees or their characters, or because I have any gangsta aspirations myself; I may be white and nerdy, but I'm not the guy in "White & Nerdy". I listen because of its metaphorical reach, and because of how vivid the language is, and because I catch in its cadences some of what makes my society what it is. During Whitman's time, it was easier to hear America singing: there wasn't so much noise in the system, and the cross-rhythms weren't so confusing. They may infuriate us, and we may not like what they have to say, or what it says about us that we listen so hard to what it is they have to say. But rappers are still the reporters who get it right.

 

Joanna Newsom -- "Cosmia"
Ys was hyped up as Joanna Newsom doing longer songs with an orchestra behind her, and that's exactly what it is, no more and no less. If you know her music and what she's about, there's nothing on this set that's going to throw you. Those who are evincing astonishment about this album or acting like it came out of nowhere must have gotten a different mix of The Milk-Eyed Mender than the one I had. I mean, c'mon guys, of course it's awesome; it's Joanna Newsom. How many insanely-literate classically-trained harpists are we working with these days?

 

John Legend -- "Save Room"
This is a punchier number than anything on Get Lifted, and even if the drum loop gets a little repetitive after awhile, it's still a pleasure to hear in a neo-soul radio set. I still don't like his jizz-gargling vocal tone, but I promise that's the last time I'm going to mention it.

 

Justin Timberlake -- "Sexy Back", "My Love" (w/ T.I.)
Further proof, as if we needed more, that Mr. Mo is the best in the business. Check out the weird clip-clop sample at the end of the chorus of "Sexy Back", and how it echoes the rhythm of the backing vox; or how about the way he keeps subtly diddling with the volume of the analog synths? By now, we all know what's coming at the end, too -- he's going to pull everything out but the hook, fuck with it a little, and goose up the beat juuuust enough to get the dance-floor hype. Then there's "My Love", and the squeaky-Martian bits that differentiate the bridge from the chorus, the timbale fills from out of nowhere, and the slow widening of the envelope filter to give the synthesizer more expression during the last stanza. Who else even thinks of this stuff? What other mainstream producer has the balls to treat the three-minute pop song as a canvas for his wigged-out sonic hallucinations? At the top, the snare sounds funny: it's too big, too shrill, and too naked. But it's been placed there to catch your interest, to irritate you, pull you closer. As Timberland adds pieces to the jigsaw one by one, it all begins to make sense, and by the end of "My Love", you've been totally interpolated and drawn into the cartoon. Oh, there's a singer on these tracks, too? Honestly, I hadn't noticed.

 

Juvenile -- "Rodeo", "Get Ya Hustle On", "Way I Be Leaning" (w/Paul Wall, Mike Jones & Skip)
Reality Check is a slow, strange cruise through a wasteland that used to be a major American city. Juvenile did his part to make the Magnolia Projects as internationally famous as Cabrini-Green and maybe even the 'Bridge, but the 'Nolia is almost gone now, swamped by that same Mississippi River that Craig Finn likes to sing about so much. On "Georgia (Bush)", Lil Wayne repeats the charge that the levees were intentionally blown up by the government to save the French Quarter. Juve doesn't get into the conspiracy theories -- not because he trusts the government, but because he figures there's plenty of blame to go around. When the FOX news helicopters were busy shooting that footage of folks in the Ninth Ward stranded on the tops of their houses, um, remind Juve again why they couldn't have dropped fresh water, food and flotation devices? Were these human beings, or just some production exec's idea of a visually compelling backdrop? "Never ever turn my back on my city!", he insists on "The Sets Go Up"; but now there isn't much left but the slow-simmering anger. So he's not going to turn his back on that, and nor should anybody expect him to, or be surprised by the extreme measures he suggests. His were the first cameras in the Ninth Ward; he's entitled to say anything he wants. Surely nobody cares more than he does.

 

Kanye West -- "Touch The Sky"
The trail single from Late Registration, and the track that many considered the album's standout. Me, I'm not so sure -- Just Blaze's vainglorious production always promises more that it delivers -- but "Touch The Sky" did introduce the world beyond the Chi to Lupe Fiasco. Not to hate on any popularly-accepted element of the culture, but hip-hop needs its nonconformists, too.

 

Keak Da Sneak -- "Super Hyphy"
Hyphy is a Bay Area thing; some compare it to a Cali version of crunk, but I don't really hear that. It's spazzy, that's for sure, but it reminds me more of the easy camaraderie and drugged confidence of the Houston clique than it does anything from Atlanta. Hyphy went national in '06, which probably means it's over. But now we can all peep the records on iTunes and pretend we've been up on it for more than a minute. Keak Da Sneak has been at it since '97 at least; he's the inventor of the term, and if the title of his '05 album That's My Word is any indication, he's got some proprietary feelings. Keak is an amusing emcee -- sort of like what Busta might be if he still cared -- and he often handles his beats himself. "Super Hyphy", though, comes from the mind of Traxamillion, an old crony of Aceyalone who has recently been reimagined as the Mannie Fresh of the S.F. Bay underground. I'm giving you these names now as the spotlight swings around the nation, looking for the next street movement to repackage for a national audience. Acres Homes and Houston had it in '05, and Oakland got some of that shine in '06. Tomorrow, it could light up your block. By this time next year, VH1 Classic could be broadcasting Behind The Music: The Hyphy Era. Better make up a dance and try to get radio play.

 

Kelis -- "Blindfold Me" (w/ Nas), "Bossy" (w/ Too Short)
I like her a lot, and I think the bob works for her, too. But let's be honest; 2006 was not a banner year for Mrs. Jones. What occasionally impresses about Kelis is that she's one of the few modern soul singers who can do a credible Nona Hendryx impersonation -- not that she'd ever have been able to keep up with LaBelle, but you can put her over a rock track and she won't sound ridiculous. Standard R&B-sleaze productions like "Bossy" are a waste of her ability. But the label wanted another "Milkshake", I'm sure, and Kelis attempted to up the naughtiness ante by strapping on the latex and making some unconvincing dominatrix moves. The nadir of her new S&M approach is "Blindfold Me", which features a rhythm guitar part that sounds like it was played on a toy some assistant engineer fetched from the kiddy aisle at Walgreens, and is about as sexy as a trip to Spencer's. Even her husband can't redeem this one.

 

Lady Sovereign -- "Love Me Or Hate Me", "Random"
Part of Jay-Z's ongoing effort to add some extra schtick to hip-hop. Lady Sov is a British emcee, which means she rhymes over beats that alternately sound like the Space Invaders soundtrack and a bowl of rice krispies. She's an okay rapper, and "Random", the UK single, seemed serviceable enough. Unfortunately, "Love Me Or Hate Me" gets lost in a backwash of gimmickry, bad jokes, belches, and lame posturing. 10% chance of having any American career past '07.

 

Lil Jon -- "Snap Yo Fingers"
After you've had all the cheap cognac you can stand, and you've torn the club up and made a menace of yourself, you might just get a little tired. The inevitable response to crunk, snap music asks listeners to sway in place and lean back and forth in their oversized white t-shirts. It's a great dance for exhausted folks. Finger-pops replace snare-drum hits in the tracks; you've all heard it, so you know what I'm talking about. To a constitutionally chilled-out Atlantan like Mr. Collipark, snap comes naturally. For crunkmaster Lil Jon, it's more of a stretch, but he loves the ATL and everything in it, so he's up to give it a spin. On "Snap Your Fingers", he keeps his screaming to a minimum (which is still plenty, by anybody else's standards) and laces one of his trademark three-note synth loops over a spare backing track. It ain't perfect, but you've got to give him points for trying -- I mean, if somebody came out with a style that was an obvious reaction against the sound you'd made world-famous, you might be more likely to punch them in the face.

 

Lil Keke -- "Chunk Up The Deuce" (w/ Paul Wall & Bun B)
The best Swishahouse emcee who didn't get invited to tip on four fours, Lil Keke has been an H-Town fixture since the days of DJ Screw. His timing has always been suspect, though -- if "Chunk Up The Deuce" had come out before Trill or the Slim Thug album dropped, it would have been received as the natural successor to "Still Tippin'". Consider: it's got everything the Mike Jones classic does, including arcane Texas slang, claustrophobic production, sizzurp-hazy rhyming, a slowed-down chorus, and a verse by the Undisputed King of the Parking Lot. Of course I love it, but I can't blame you if you're a wee bit sick of this style by now.

 

Lil Scrappy -- "Money In The Bank" (w/ Young Buck)
He looks like Nas after inhaling too much dro, but when he opens his mouth, it's more like Juicy J. The latest G-Unit hanger-on has been seen poking around in videos for a few years now, and rumor has it that he kicked a verse on "What You Gon Do?" I wasn't really listening then, and I ran in horror from Trillville too, so this is my introduction to the kid. He's really nothing special, but there isn't anything about this track that's not to like, especially if you dig conspicuous consumption. Young Buck even talks about his Murcielago, a type of Lamborghini that doesn't get mentioned enough in rap songs. Apparently he also has a Bentley that he's only driven once. You decide yourself if that's a mark of distinction or a horrible waste of chrome.

 

Lil Wayne -- "Hustler Muzik", "Shooter" (w/ Thicke)
Points supporting the assertion that Weezy is the best rapper alive: superior vocal i.d., great sense of humor, decent song out under his name titled "Best Rapper Alive", undisputed ability to kill the mic once he gets on a roll. Point contradicting that assertion: he doesn't get on a roll all that often. Since coronating himself, Lil Wayne has saved most of his best work for the mixtapes, slaying the opposition over other people's beats. The Carter 2 saddled us with a duff track for every burner; luckily, the singles were all good. "Hustler Muzik" is cinematic and velvet-smooth, and shows off the Weezy who can slip effortlessly behind the beat and sustain hypnotic precision for the better part of a verse. Sure, Rakim used to do it all the time, but this is 2006, and these days producers can't resist the urge to ProTools their vocal tracks to fuck and back. "Shooter" is the famed collaboration with Robin Thicke -- a re-jiggering of one of the better songs from Cherry Blue Skies -- and here Wayne ignores the crime-drama subject matter and instead goes on a psycho rant about dismissive Yankee attitudes toward the Dirty Dirty. I will quote my favorite stanza in full, nominally directed at Hot-97, but really meant for everybody who continues to slag off Dixie creativity (I'm talking to you, motherfucker): "to the radio stations, I'm tired of being patient/ stop being rapper racists, region haters/ spectators, dictators, behind-door dick takers/ it's outrageous!/ you don't know how sick you make us/ I wanna throw up like chips in Vegas/ but this is Southern/ Face it, if we're too simple, then y'all don't get the basics". He'll get another chance to whip the East Coast establishment at their own game when The Carter 3 drops later this month. I'll be pulling for him, but only an outright classic is going to shut the haters up for good.

LL Cool J -- "Control Myself" (w/ Jennifer Lopez)
Attempt to resurrect an old-school flow for the Golden Age nostalgia-mongers. Nothing to telegraph home about, but certainly not the worst experiment LL has undertaken in the past few years. Jennifer Lopez only appears on the track to justify featuring her buns and bellybutton in the video, but I guess that's better than propping her up in front of a mic and asking her to sing a verse.

 

Lloyd Banks & 50 Cent -- "Hands Up"
Those who don't consult the rap press may not know that the title of 50 Cent's upcoming album is Before I Self-Destruct. For the sake of these G-Unit clowns, I hope that's just posturing. Mr. Jackson has moved mountains for his crew, and that appeals to my sense of altruism and team loyalty. It has yet to appeal to my eardrums, though. The problem isn't that 50 has surrounded himself with talent-challenged rappers -- though nobody in G-Unit has really distinguished himself yet. It's that they're all jerks. Morally, the members of 50's crew are no worse than other emcees, but personally, they're all unlikable cads, competing with each other to say shitty, ungracious things that might impress the boss. On "Hands Up", Banks boasts about his plasma, and then turns around and assures us that he "wouldn't buy a chick a pump that got asthma". It's such a blatant attempt to cop some of 50's casual callousness that it makes me feel sorry for him, and it's a move that's repeated all over Rotten Apple. Getting a beatdown from the legendary bully is fine; it'll give you a story to tell in the lunchroom. Fending off the copycat hostility of his annoying sidekicks is just humiliating for everybody.

 

Ludacris -- "Money Maker"(w/ Pharrell), "Grew Up A Screw Up" (w/ Young Jeezy)
That click-clack noise you hear coming from the engine is Ludacris switching over to cruise control. "Pimpin' All Over The World" was a strong contender for the worst song of 2005, and it suggested that the hardest working emcee in A-town needed a break to recharge his batteries. Instead, he's come right back with Release Therapy, which, in conjunction with his new self-image as Hollywood's leading thug, is supposed to grease his moves on the adult contemporary market. "Grew Up A Screw Up" is the autobiographical track, but he's already told this story with much more richness and humor on "Gossip Folks" -- and he didn't make you deal with Young Jeezy while he was doing it. Meanwhile, "Money Maker" is something I never thought I'd hear from Luda: a league-average rap track without a flash of wit, personality, or vigorous wordplay. If he's really determined to follow the Ice-T career path from respected emcee to inane TV sideman, I doubt he'll encounter much friction. I hear the pay is better over there, and money has been rumored to draw the interest of professional rappers. He'll never get to be Ludacris again, though. He should consider what he's throwing away.

 

Lupe Fiasco -- "Daydreamin'" (w/ Jill Scott), "Kick Push", "I Gotcha"
Deft emceeing by a Muslim would-be backpacker with a few axes to grind. He can be as crabby as Trugoy on his worst day, and his constant self-positioning as an alternative to commercial emcees is tiresome and hypocritical: he's accepting tracks from Pharrell Williams and money from Reebok. Still, whenever he stops whining and genuflecting for the cameras, he proves he's an agile narrator with a fresh perspective -- "Kick Push", in particular, is an interesting love story about a couple of skate-kids. If he worried less about what other people were doing and concentrated more on his own storytelling, we might really have something here. In the meantime, we can all enjoy the flow.

 

Matisyahu -- "King Without A Crown"
This June, My Teenage Stride played a show with a group called Shondes at Northsix. For those of you who didn't grow up in Springfield or Livingston or on the Upper West Side, shondes means "shame" in Yiddish. It's something that your bubbe might say if you she caught you jerking off, or taking in the middle of the cantor's act. Anyway, the group turned out to be a bunch of engaging Jewish-American socialist kids from NYU, some of whom were transgender, and all of whom were punks. To promote the show, they did an interview with the Village Voice that somehow turned into a condemnation of Matisyahu. To Shondes, the cult of Matisyahu is stealth-Zionist, and thus ought to be ideologically troubling to progressive and pro-Palestinian American Jews. It wasn't clear from the piece whether Shondes was also calling out Lyor Cohen in a roundabout way, but he's been beat up recently, too, and for many of the same reasons. 2006 turned out to be a terrible year for the cool Jews. It was tough to fly your Star of David proudly. And while much of that can be blamed on the missteps of the Olmert regime and on some of the other jokers in Tel Aviv, I'm pretty sure it went beyond simple disapproval of Israel's geopolitical moves. I'm about as tuned in to variations in the degree of ambient anti-Semitism as any goyboy can be, and I say with some authority that in '06, America experienced a real spike in crypto-Jew-bashing of the well-worn European variety. I saw it on websites and in the academic press. I heard it out of the mouths of Democratic-populist candidates I was supposed to be pulling for. I got it from conspiracy theorists and mainstream analysts, and from countless e-mail circulars that casually compared the elected Israeli government with the Third Reich. At times I couldn't tell if they were saying that Israel was the Fort Apache for evil American colonialists, or if sneaky Jewish puppet-masters had hoodwinked wholesome Uncle Sam into invading Iraq. Look, nobody likes to see villages in flames and civilians dead on the streets. But the Israeli government was going to be forced to react to Hezbollah sooner or later, because Sharon's '00 pullback from southern Lebanon had only emboldened Nasrallah and his forces; they refused to cede any authority to the Lebanese army or the government in Beirut, and, backed by Syria and Iran, kept fighting a guerrilla war on any pretext they could muster. Olmert decided it needed to be sooner rather than later, so he acted before the Iranians came up with an atom bomb and changed the equation for good. I wish he hadn't, and I'm sure you do, too, but safe in the USA and with no rockets slamming into our hometowns, that's easy for the both of us to say. Now, I know you aren't convinced, and you probably think I'm some kind of Zionist lackey, so let me put it to you a little differently. Let's say that New Jersey was its own independent country. Now imagine that every neighboring state -- Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, New York, you name it -- was controlled by our mortal enemies (don't say it). The regimes in charge of these territories are led by demagogues, most of whom consolidate their power bases by blaming everything that's wrong in their crappy civil societies on people from New Jersey. Many of these neighboring states have it written into their constitutions that New Jersey has no right to exist and ought to be eliminated, by force, if necessary. And then one day the autocratic leader of Illinois -- let's call him Sufjan -- gets on international television and tells the world that New Jersey ought to be wiped off the map, eradicated. Sufjan makes heroes out of Jersey-haters in Illinois, and he even invites bogus historians from all over the world to Chicago to rewrite Jersey history, all on the government's dime. Illinois is a formidable regional power with more territory and people than we've got. Moreover, everybody knows damned well that despite his smiling face, Sufjan has expansionist ambitions and is bent on developing nuclear weapons. Now, while all this is happening, a bunch of fundamentalist rednecks in Scranton/Wilkes-Barre have organized to fight a border war against New Jersey over territorial claims. We can't even appeal to Pennsylvania about this, because the government in Harrisburg is provisional and weak, and has no wherewithal (allegedly) to clamp down on the fundamentalist rednecks themselves. So here we are, missiles falling on Hunterdon County and Jersey people getting killed in their homes. And where are the rednecks getting the money to launch these attacks? That's right, it's coming from Sufjan. Now, like KRS, tell me what the fuck am I supposed to do? Do I sit on my hands and trust that Sufjan wouldn't slip the rednecks with nukes? Or do I try to take the fight to the other side of the Delaware? My point is not that Israel is a blameless victim here; we all know better than that, and we don't have to act like we're at Hebrew Day School. Israel has picked plenty of stupid fights in the past fifty years, and its government has authorized all kinds of repressive and discriminatory measures that we wish they hadn't. But even if you believe that the foundation of a Jewish state in the Middle East was a mistake (I do not), it isn't 1948 anymore. We can't turn back the clock. Israel is not getting overrun or eradicated or even harassed without a gigantic fight, and when that fight appears to be knocking on the gates of Tel Aviv, it's tough to excoriate the Knesset completely. This isn't about taking sides, or determining who's got the moral high-ground; the hour is too late for that. The task now is to prevent the proxy war now being fought between Israel and Iran from turning into nuclear Armageddon. That day is much closer than you think, because short of a regime change that isn't going to happen, Tehran is going to get its nukes. When they do, an administration that has pledged itself to the eradication of Israel is going to have the capacity to do just that. Think about that for a minute, armchair-progressive American, and put yourself in the position of an Israeli leader. I'm not running down the Iranians here, at least not too much; they've been treated terribly by America, and considering the occupation force now making mischief in Baghdad, their desire to arm themselves is totally understandable. They've got their own legitimate grievances against the world community, and these ought to be taken seriously. Still, we're about to be up against something we've never faced before: a nuclear-armed Islamic fundamentalist country with a long enemies list. Will Tehran be loose with the atom bombs, or with the tactical nuclear weapons they develop? You don't think so? Would you really want to bet your life on that? Olmert decided to try to eliminate one of Tehran's more obvious clients, which, again, is understandable given the players involved. Contrary to conventional wisdom, the Israeli invasion of Lebanon was not a total wipeout: Nasrallah had built much of his authority on his assurances that the Israelis would never cross the border to attack Hezbollah outright. He was wrong about that, and the Lebanese perception of his leadership and of his organization -- from the government in Beirut down to the dirt farmers outside Tyre -- has changed for good. No matter what Beth and Elan Q. Public on the streets of Tel Aviv now thinks of the Olmert administration, the Israeli government accomplished some of its objectives this summer. The collateral damage was more than any of us could bear, though, so it's in all of our interests to make sure that there isn't a reprise in Lebanon or elsewhere. This is why it's more important than ever to have a credible national security team in place in Washington, and why you don't discard certain national figures who are up on all this stuff just because they happen to disagree with you about the Iraq war. Rant almost over, I promise, but a few of you guys really got my back up about Israel in '06, and I use these Abstracts as a place to unload, so hold your breath a little while longer and we'll be back to the radio singles before you know it. Now: it certainly is not anti-Semitic to criticize the Israeli government, especially when the Israeli government does ever so much to invite that criticism. But when you thoughtlessly blame Israel for everything that's wrong in the Middle East, and you refuse to credit their very understandable reasons for responding to real crises the way that they have, you're echoing the rhetoric of totalitarian anti-Semitic regimes. And from there, pal, it's a very slippery slope down into the cesspool of outright anti-Semitism. Some of these anti-Semitic caricatures have been around for thousands of years; they're very easy to summon to life, even accidentally. The online hyperbole surrounding the campaign of a certain insurgent started out innocently enough: it was all about peace and accountability and ending pointless and costly wars abroad. But somewhere along the line it soured, and all I started hearing about was AIPAC, and the cryptic relationship between America and Israel, and the influence of elites in high places who were enriching themselves at the expense of "typical" Americans. Me, I'm from Springfield, New Jersey, home of Temples Beth Ahm, Shaarey Shalom, and Congregation Israel (not to mention the Bagel Supreme on Mountain Avenue), and I've ridden this train before.The next stop on the express is usually the Rothschilds, and then something about Mossad bombing the World Trade Center, and from there, all hell breaks loose. I can break all this stuff down further if you wish: despite my outward appearance as a mild-mannered rock and roll star, I'm a student of Near Eastern history and have been since I was thirteen years old. A self-indulgent goofball document like the Pop Music Abstract probably isn't the place to get into the geopolitical record, though, so I'm going to stop now; I suggest you do, too.

 

Maximo Park -- "Apply Some Pressure"
Aah, back to the rock; hopefully to stay, huh? Like many new-model groups out of England, this gang of Geordies could be properly described as "angular". That means that the guitar player likes to thwack away at the fretboard rather than strum or (god forbid) solo, and the drummer is too stiff and hyperactive to settle into a groove. Yet in Paul Smith, they've found themselves an engaging pseudo-intellectual blowhard to front the band -- and the more pompous his pronouncements get, the more Maximo Park works. He isn't much of a poet and he's even less of a love-man, but his stories of romantic misadventure in Newcastle have a bumbling authenticity that's ultimately winning. "Apply Some Pressure" was one of the highlights of the debut, but I prefer the demo version from the B-sides collection because it sounds like it was recorded inside a tuna can. When a feller becomes comfortable hollering things like "I hope that IIIIIIII am still alive next year!" in order to pick up a chick, poetic justice demands that he be pinched and squashed by an audio engineer.

 

Motion Man -- "One Time For Your Mind" (w/ Gift Of Gab)
Warning: football fan on the mic. Named after a backfielder and prone to dropping the names of all-pros in his rhymes ("I'm Marvin Harrison!/ I'm the recipient!"), Motion Man labored for years in the boisterous shadows of Kool Keith and Kutmasta Kurt. That makes him an underground emcee by association, but really he just wants to grab ass, drink beer, eat, and watch the game. Proof positive that alternative rap doesn't have to be joyless.

 

My Chemical Romance -- "Welcome To The Black Parade"
I guess my main question for you is: why are these bands always either from New Jersey or Nevada? There must be some correlation between legalized gambling and ostentatious, theatrical emo-lite. Don't bring up the Hard Rock Hotel and the performing stage at the Trump Taj Majal; these kids never would have gotten through the casino doors without getting carded and thrown out on their asses by the pit boss. When the next big pop-punk band comes at you straight outta Uncasville, remember -- you read the flimsy hypothesis here first.

 

Nas -- "Hip-Hop Is Dead", "Black Republican"
Nas has his clothing line and his mounds of swag, but he's not a retailer. He's got his Ill Will imprint and he likes to rhyme about starting "his very own Motown", but he's not a business mogul. He brags about sex but he's not a mack; he's married to Kelis but he's not a celebrity show-pony. He doesn't produce beats or monkey around on other people's albums, he doesn't fake his way through blues licks on an instrument he just picked up a week before recording, and he doesn't sing. He doesn't do movies or television shows, or con his way onto attendance-hungry CBA teams. He doesn't write books or blogs or newspaper editorials. He doesn't lecture at CUNY; he's not an actor or a politician or a criminal kingpin or a role model. No, Nas is a rapper, period, and a damned good one. Every time he opens his mouth, he reminds us once again that that's all we ever ask these guys to be.

 

Nelly Furtado -- "Maneater", "Te Busque", "All Good Things", "Promiscuous"
Four very different singles, and a good indication of how schizophrenic Loose is. Strange, that, since Timbaland produced almost all of it. "Promiscuous", which unless you spent the summer filming penguins in Antarctica, you've probably heard, is the straight-up modern dancefloor move; "Maneater" goes with its title and delivers some Eighties top-40 pop. "All Good Things" is old-school singer-songwriter Furtado; kind of like "Turn Off The Light", but with a stronger vocal performance. I believe Jon Secada left "Te Busque" hanging on the coat rack on his way out of the Copacabana. Those searching for the real Furtado aren't likely to find it here. Normally, that kind of thing doesn't bother me, but I do think it's funny that it's now seven years into her recording career and we still have no idea who or what she is.

 

Ne-Yo -- "So Sick", "Sexy Love"
Everybody knows who the single biggest influence on contemporary R&B is. All these guys do their level best to make like MJ; when Shaffer "Ne-Yo" Smith wrote "Let Me Love You" for Mario, it was the ghost of "Human Nature" that he was chasing. The second-biggest influence isn't discussed much. But anytime you hear that quicksilver, super-smooth delivery (and they all do it from time to time), the legacy of Bone Thugs-N-Harmony carries on. I don't know anybody who really respected Bone Thugs in the mid-Nineties -- they were always something of a joke to me, a Midwestern freak show with an approach that seemed too diatonic for soul music and too limp for hip-hop. Still, I think about "Crossroads" every time somebody close to me dies, and I'm sure I'm not the only one. Ne-Yo doesn't slip into the Bone Thugs delivery anywhere near as often as his competition does, but traces of it are always discernable. It's become the de facto mode for R&B singers when they decide to be intimate-prosaic and conversational, which is why Usher overused it on Confessions. Rapid-fire patter is the new pillow talk; sorry, ladies.

 

Oasis -- "Mucky Fingers", "Keep The Dream Alive"
I'm no stranger to the Braves/ Where Don Slaught and Cabrera collide/ And Bonds throws home a moment too late!/ I will keep Sid Bream alive.

 

Omarion -- "Entourage"
As I believe I said earlier, Omarion is like a fourth-generation Xerox of Usher via Ne-Yo and Chris Brown, with each copy getting grainier and harder to scan. Omarion is the quarterback you're forced to play when Usher (the starter) goes down, Ne-Yo (the talented backup who'll soon be taking his job) twists an ankle, and Chris Brown (the #1 draft pick who didn't exactly work out) is out with the flu. As the Brooks Bollinger of this operation, Omarion needs to make the most of his chances, which mostly means dancing around in videos like his trousers are on fire. So while not a playmaker or anything like that, we cannot question his fortitude or his mental toughness, or his desire to leave it all on the field. That counts, but it's not something that's really going to move the chains for you on Sunday morning.

 

Outkast -- "Morris Brown", "Idlewild Blue", "Mighty O", "Hollywood Divorce"
"All the fresh styles start out as a hood thing", says Andre 3000 in "Hollywood Divorce", "and by the time they get to Hollywood, it's over". He doesn't sound angry about it, just sad. Mos Def; now he was pissed: he gave us the argument on "Rock And Roll" and called Elvis Presley and the Rolling Stones plagiarists in the process. De La Soul had their own bitter crossover number -- "Patty Dookes" on Balloon Mindstate -- where they sampled from The Five Heartbeats. Now, we've all been to rock school, so we know where they're coming from: we've all heard the Colonel Tom Parker quote about finding the white boy who could sing like a black boy and making a million dollars. Students of history that we are, I think we all expected something similar to happen to hip-hop. But a funny thing happened on the way to the co-opting -- rap did not become Caucasian. On the contrary: now that Eminem has "retired", the only pale face you'll see on MTV Jams is Paul Wall, the exception that proves the rule. Now ask yourself, homeboy, why is that? When I started listening to rap music in 1984, this was music made by African-Americans for an urban audience; there was plenty of desire to cross over and sell records, but emcees hadn't yet penetrated the suburbs. By the time I was in college, wealthy white kids had memorized g-rap records, had posters of Eazy-E in their dorm rooms, and dreamt about rolling in the '64 Impala and etcetera. We all knew what was next: the rap version of Elvis, who'd bring a watered-down and palatable version of that swagger to the white kids who drive record sales. But hip-hop is now more than thirty years old, and all the most prominent folks who do it are still black. Few white emcees of any credibility have ever emerged, and fewer yet have appealed to anybody but lyrics-obsessed underground heads. It turned out that little Johnny Suburb didn't want to hear g-rap lyrics from a white spokesperson -- he demanded that an authentic black face be attached to the fantasy. On one level, this is just another version of that same old exploitative cliché, and as long as, in the immortal words of Chuck D, "the one who makes the money is white, not black", I'm sure everything is cool over at Capitol Records and Warner Entertainment Group. But I believe that rap music has powerfully affected the average white kid's ability to cross-identify, and done so in a way that rock and pop and soul never managed. Sure, plenty about America has changed since 1955, but never forget that hip-hop has been an enormous part of that change. We get so hypnotized by the rap charts and the beefs and the ugly particulars that it's hard to step back and recognize the effect that hip-hop has had on our attitudes and impressions, and the language we use. My guess is that in one hundred years or so, hip-hop will be recognized as the crucial transformative movement of our moment: not just an engine of new social mobility, but also a platform for crosscultural communication. Ironically, it was Prince Be who put the telling quote on record: all great things, said Nietzche, must first wear terrifying and monstrous masks in order to inscribe themselves on the hearts of humanity.

 

Panacea -- "Starlite"
Solid alt-rap cut from a D.C. area team with an obvious debt to Common and A Tribe Called Quest. 9th Wonder and okayplayer fanboys will eat this up, but that doesn't necessarily mean you ought to steer clear. Haters like to say that all rap is violent and aggressive, but there are a record number of "positive" emcees floating around the periphery of the industry these days. Yet another way that perceptions are out of line with reality, but then it's been awhile since the haters have bothered to listen to anything other than "Hey Ya!" and Late Registration.

 

Panic! At The Disco -- "I Write Sins Not Tragedies", "But It's Better If You Do"
Humor me here for a moment: what's the difference between Panic! At The Disco and The Decemberists? Both bands are led by irritating post-emo singers who battle with pitch, but still insist on cementing their vocals right in the middle of the mix. The Decemberists are drama-club kids who err on the side of theatricality and whose intellectual reach exceeds their grasp; ditto for Panic! At The Disco. They're throwback college-rock bands that borrow liberally from The Smiths and The Cure; both principal songwriters are handy with anthemic choruses, and both will nod in the direction of emo-pop when it serves them. The Decemberists are now the superior musicians, but when Castaways And Cutouts first came out, they could barely recognize their own instruments. (It's also unclear whether technical improvement has made them a better band.) Colin Meloy writes with more grace than Brendon Urie does, and he's far better-read, but both lyricists principally deal in grand archetypes and twice-told tales. The Decemberists have taken a turn toward the glam-proggy; arguably, Panic! At The Disco were already there. Like thousands of other "serious" pop music fans, I've worn out all five Decemberists recordings, and tried hard with the ones I haven't liked. I've barely paid any attention to Panic! At The Disco. Just this moment, it occurs to me that I couldn't tell you why it's shaken down like that. I feel like I've been successfully pigeonholed in somebody's demographic scheme. Could somebody from The Early November please throw me a line?

 

Papoose -- "Get Right" (w/ Busta Rhymes)
The erstwhile savior of NYC hip-hop has been in a frustrating holding pattern for several years now. Nobody expects him to change the game anymore; these days, we'll just settle for any released material. His guest shots and his underground single aren't going to knock you dead -- they only hint at what makes Papoose so electrifying. If you can't wait, head down to Fulton Street and splurge on some mixtapes. 15% chance we still pull a classic debut out of him, 35% chance he releases a compromised record that satisfies nobody, and a disappointing 50% chance that he dies on the vine, another victim of Joe Budden Syndrome.

 

Paris Hilton -- "Stars Are Blind"
As long as you don't watch reality television or pay attention to the entertainment press, Paris Hilton can't hurt you. To a crank like me, she's just a replacement-level pop star; enamored of pitch-correction software and ultimately no different from JoJo or Mandy Moore. No, the celebrities who exude personality beyond the packaging are the ones you need to watch out for. I didn't see the Borat movie, and nor do I have much interest in it, but I can tell you this much: lying about your intentions, misrepresenting your project, and filming people without their consent isn't cool or subversive. It's called bullying; and Judy Blume has written some books about it that you may have read. Sasha Baron Cohen picked on a group of people (and an entire country) that didn't have the platform or wherewithal to fight back, and I'm not sure why folks who ordinarily abhor this kind of shitty behavior are now falling all over themselves to praise him. He seems like a real jerk to me.

 

Paul Simon -- "How Can You Live In The Northeast?"
The old hermit pounds away over the flame until the cutting edges of his writing are razor-sharp and every surface glistens. Pop poetry is not often where you look for precise language and evocative images, but you can never go wrong with a Paul Simon song. He's still turning in those term papers, and still managing straight As, after all these years. "How Can You Live In The Northeast" manages to condense a college essay's worth of geopolitical resonance into a few elliptical phrases. Thanks to production -- sonic landscaping, I mean -- by Brian Eno, it's a lot funkier than Niall Ferguson, too.

 

Paul Wall -- "Girl"
The trail single from The People's Champ, with a sped-up Chi-Lites sample a la Kanye West. This one is "for the ladies", which means that it isn't all that good, but at least he keeps his misogyny in check for most of it. In general, the H-Town emcees treat their female characters better than rappers from other parts of the country do. Where an Atlanta or Compton g-rapper might go out of his way to humiliate their girls in rhyme, his Houston counterpart is often just casually macking. Hey, it's something.

 

Pharrell Williams & Kanye West -- "Number One"
The filmy, oily substance that leaked out of In My Mind as it tanked. The layer of floating effluent was shallow, of course, but it also spread out over the ocean for days and took forever to clean up. Many initially thought that Kanye was just a seabird stuck in the muck, but I believe he showed up because he was tired of getting called a producer-emcee, and he wanted audiences to A-B his rapping next to that of a real pretty-boy boardsman with no business on the mic. He's cagey like that. I'm sure that the record industry felt that they owed a solo release to Williams, who's merely co-produced every other hit on the Billboard charts for the past decade. Now that it's come and gone, we can all forget it happened, and Pharrell can return to mumbling choruses on Robin Thicke songs and making those weird mouth noises that the kids love so much.

 

Phoenix -- "Consolation Prizes"
Parisian yo-yos with talent to burn, the boys of Phoenix spent years playing pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey with vintage AM radio, tinkering with synth textures, and laboring to get that perfect Seals & Crofts acoustic guitar sound. Then one day it occurred to them: perhaps we should just rock, oui? Turns out they weren't archivists or fetishists or accomplished songwriters or even sophisticated transatlantic ironists -- they were just pop stars. I still have no idea what their songs are about, but for once, I'll call that a casualty of translation and move on.

 

Pimp C -- "Pourin' Up"
Four years in jail is a long time. That's an entire presidential administration's worth of lockdown. Pimp C ended up doing more time than C-Murder did (though still not as much as Slick Rick), and still hit the ground running upon his release. The first message on Pimpalation goes to his momma: "Your son is home out of the slavemaster's system, and we're about to act real bad, and make a bunch of money." Made me smile. The next thing you know, he's gone and sampled Tom Petty from Full Moon Fever, and he's singing along -- "I'm freeee!" Hey, you'd be giddy, too. There but for fortune, pal, and don't you forget it.

 

Pink -- "Stupid Girls", "U And Ur Hand"
Wow, somebody's been hitting the Haterade hard. "Stupid Girls" is an unprovoked attack on commercial radio singers and video girls that's almost as nasty as The Game's. I'm not sure if this has to do with anxiety of influence, or if Pink is just mad that her last album stiffed. It has to infuriate her that Gwen Stefani and Nelly Furtado get better beats than she does these days, but she hung herself by insisting that her periodic gross-out moves were part of her essential persona. How can you expect anybody but Linda Perry to want to work with that?

 

Pitbull -- "Ay Chico", "Bojangles" (w/ Ying-Yang Twins)
Very interesting Miami emcee with booty rhymes for the party and a few choice words for Fidel Castro, too. His ballyhooed fusion of reggaeton, salsa, and Atlanta rap is still more incipient than actual, and, honestly, El Mariel might be a little rowdy for the post-crunk South Coast. So Pitbull might just have missed his chance at massive mainstream success, but he's opened enough ears all across America that he's virtually guaranteed himself a permanent platform. My sense is that he's just getting started, but that the hitmaking portion of his career is probably over. Outside of Florida, I mean; in Miami, he'll be on local commercial radio for as long as he wants to be.

 

Prince -- "Black Sweat"
Nifty pop-funk track from everybody's favorite genre practitioner. Honestly, I don't know why it wasn't a hit. It may have been his umpteenth attempt to recapture the magic of "Kiss", but this one came closer than he's been in awhile: whispers, falsetto vocal, big beat, whistling lead, some sub-Stevie Wonder synth on the chorus, dramatic pauses, call-and-response verse. It's not like there's someone else out there making stuff like this, or anybody who ever did it better.

 

Regina Spektor -- "Fidelity"
Drag and drop to create your own Zwinky. Hit the monkey and get free iPod Nano.

 

Rich Boy & Polow Da Don -- "Throw Some D's"
Producer Polow Da Don was responsible for "Pimpin' All Over The World", a horror not sonically dissimilar to "Throw Some D's". But subject matter makes all the difference: instead of a jaded rap star blathering unconvincingly about how the best women reside in Africa, we've got a hungry kid from Mobile rhyming about his car. "D's" are Dayton spokes, see, and he's going to use crack money to turn his Caddy into a rolling testament to his wealth. Rich Boy has a certain swampy way with vowels; he grew up listening to Juve and he's doing his best to mimic the delivery. He's just the latest to take this metaphor for a spin, and once he's done, he'll slip the keys to somebody else. Who knows if we'll ever hear from him again? How could it possibly matter? This year's answer to "Diamonds On My Neck".

 

Rick Ross -- "Hustlin'", "Push It"
Most unwelcome trend in hip-hop 2006: couplets with an interior rhyme ending in a homonym. Rick Ross is a huge offender: on "Hustlin'", he's "rich off that yayo/ steady slangin' yayo/ my Chevy bangin' Yayo." Not satisfied with that, he drops this one on us: "don't tote no twenty-twos/ magnum cost me twenty-two/ sat it on them twenty-twos/ birds go for twenty-two/ lil' mama super thick/ she say she's twenty-two/ she seen my twenty-twos/ we in room twenty-two." A few years ago, I made fun of Juelz Santana for doing this; now, every rapper in the country has decided to make like Jonathan Richman on "I'm Straight". It was annoying when the Modern Lovers did it, and it's even more annoying now. They call it "rhyming" for a reason. Try it, folks.

 

Rihanna -- "SOS", "Unfaithful"
Generic R&B doesn't really suit her, but better that than the Jamaican travesties she foisted on us last year. I still consider her more of a commercial for Club Med than an actual pop star, but her songs keep making the charts, so I guess we've got to take her seriously. "SOS" borrows the hook from "Tainted Love", a piece of repetitive Early-eighties synth-soul that was tolerable (maybe) the first thousand times you heard it. Rihanna is gambling that there's an entirely new generation of kids who missed it the first time around, and of course she is correct about that. The philandering anthem "Unfaithful" gives her a podium for melodrama and absurd overstatement -- both crucial components of the R&B playbook. Still, I'd rather hear Mariah Carey do something like this, and that's saying quite a lot, because I hate Mariah Carey.

 

Sean Paul -- "Temperature", "(When You Gonna) Give It Up To Me" (w/ Keisha Cole)
Well, that comet sure streaked across the sky in a New York minute. Sean Paul went from a Caribbean no-name to a club-rocking hitmaker to a grind-'em-out hack in a matter of three years, which has got to be some kind of world record for creative burnout. At no point were his skills anything special, but he made up for it with exuberance and enthusiasm for booty. "We Be Burnin'", the lead single from his follow-up to Dutty Rock, strongly suggested that he'd taken that Maverick money down to Kingston and bought himself a ganja plantation. Subsequent radio songs have gone up in smoke-haze; "Temperature", in particular, is insubstantial, and what's worse, it indicates very little vigor or personality. Or brain cells. Great expectations for Sean Paul were probably always unrealistic, and not just because he's never shown us that he's got more than one idea. Let's let him light up and leave him alone.

 

Shakira & Wyclef -- "Hips Don't Lie"
In case you hadn't noticed, hips are very important to Shakira. I prefer hips to booty myself, though this does appear to place me in the minority. If you look back at rock history, a healthy percentage of "love" songs have always been about ass, but ever since Mix-A-Lot dropped "Baby Got Back", we're approaching an event horizon where "love" songs are about nothing else. I consider this God's punishment for the unjust mutilation of the original lyrics to "Tutti Frutti". As you may know, the first iteration of the song went "Tutti Frutti, good booty"; as Little Richard was originally a flaming Southern homosexual in a context where it was a-okay to sing about craving anal penetration. Such content wasn't fit for national broadcast, though, so the line was changed to the meaningless "aw rudy". (They kept the pained howls of sexual desperation, though.) Little Richard grew up, found Jesus, and renounced ass-pounding. Fast-forward fifty years, and now it's impossible to turn on the radio and find a song that doesn't discuss good booty. Of course these new booty numbers are ostensibly about female ass, but the anal fixation of contemporary radio stars suggests to me that the whitewash is still awfully weather-resistant. Why do these men want to put it in the fanny so badly anyway? What sorts of fantasies are being sublimated here? Consider that female characters are barely elaborated in these songs, but often they include ritualized pissing contests between big, tough men -- many of whom boast about the prison time they've done. There's no need to belabor the point: we all know that when rappers and singers go on about "good booty", the "tutti frutti" part is frequently implied. Maybe someday we'll be able to reclaim Little Richard's statement of sexual abandon without any beating around the bush. Anyway: Shakira. She's proud of her hips, and hips are specifically feminine -- you never hear guys talking about their hips, unless they're Olympic gymnasts who've just fallen off of a pommel horse. I give her props for that alone, since most female R&B singers have gotten on board the ass-train too. There are other body parts, and they don't deserve to go unsung. Let's get a nice boobie cut going, people; nobody wants to have to haul Joe Walsh out of retirement.

 

Snow Patrol -- "Chasing Cars"
Okay, cut that out right now. One Coldplay is more than enough.

 

Talib Kweli -- "Listen!!!"
Yet another Kweli track about how what he does is "real hip-hop" and everybody else is, I suppose, a big fake, "Listen!!" is actually at bit more spirited than the stuff we usually get out of this nut. The lyrics are still pretty vague and he is, as always, given to spouting platitudes. But he does manage to rhyme "vintage" with "hard-earned spinach" and make it work, and that takes "skills". Considering that the Hi-Tek comeback single was halfway decent, too, Mos Def has a new album coming out, and Rawkus Records is back in operation, I don't know what the fuck people are talking about when they say that all contemporary rap is violent and confrontational. There has never been more "conscious" hip-hop material in general release as there is right now. It's enough to make a scumbag like me beg Shady/Aftermath for an advance copy of Before I Self-Destruct.

 

T.I. -- "What You Know", "Why You Wanna"
King sold more copies than any other rap album released this year. To some, this represents a validation of T.I.'s obnoxious-weenie approach on the mic. Me, I just wish that the top producers in hip-hop would stop wasting their best material on this guy. I'm not going to pretend that "What You Know" isn't an ace track, but let's be real: you could've had Mike Bloomberg cut the lead vocal and it still would have been slamming. Word is that Da Mayor has stacked some bank of his own, and that by November '08, he might have something to get crunk about.

 

The A'z -- "Yadadamean"
Outrageously infectious hyphy cut from a bunch of Oakland who-the-hell-are-theys. And you can be confident you'll never hear from them again, too. But for autumn '06, they've come up with the one near-perfect thing that Stuart Murdoch sings so persuasively about in "If She Wants Me". "Yadadamean" opens with a synth fanfare and a crazy drum break, and then settles into a barely-there verse over which the emcees mumble some incomprehensible-yet-menacing Cali slang. It's kind of like a Bay Area version of Big L's "Ebonics", only they're not too worried about whether or not you're following what they're saying. Every few lines, the producers punctuate the jargon by bringing the fanfare back, and the rappers keep right on mumbling, only it's in unison and twice as tough to understand. The beat flips twice, and then the drum break returns, and now everybody is going nuts, arms up, dreads flopping over their faces, shouting along.

 

The Decemberists -- "Oh! Valencia"
The Crane Wife is better than Picaresque. But it's also clear that The Decemberists are never going to recapture the charm of their early indiepop recordings -- they've gotten too serious, and too good at their instruments. It's Colin Meloy who needs to make the adjustment: he's still writing about sailors, Victorian war babies, and murderers, hinting at characters but never bothering to develop any. That was okay when they were plinking away at banjos and cheap synths, because the flimsiness of his storytelling felt a bit like Edward Gorey-style formal satire. But now that his band has turned into the second coming of Jethro Tull, everything he sings sounds like a Pronouncement. Compare "The Soldiering Life" from Her Majesty to "When The War Came" from the latest album -- both songs about military conflict and the attitudes that accompany battle. The older track worked because it sounded threadbare and hopeful, and the tone of the group matched the interesting bits of Meloy's narrative: homoeroticism in the trenches and bloodletting as a male-bonding activity. The newer song pounds away like portentious Led Zep, and directs attention to the song's well-meaning but simpleminded statement: "our trust put in the gov-errmeeent/ they told their lies as heaven-sent!" Ooookiedoo. To be fair, Meloy was always a good rhythm guitar player -- it just took his band a few years to catch up with him. Now that they have, they swap insight for wattage far too frequently. Meloy either needs to scale the band back (which isn't going to happen) or step up his game and write some lyrics that rely less on archetypes and more on his own imagination. He's a smart guy; he'll figure it out. Hint: losing the Death Cab For Cutie producer-dude would be a step in the right direction.

 

The Early November -- "Hair"
I wrote so damned much about The Mother, The Mechanic, and The Path on NJ.com, and two months later I feel like revisiting that document, ripping it up, and starting fresh. For instance, how could I have spaced on Ace Enders's obsession with money and material comfort? Almost every song on The Mechanic assesses a character's financial worth, and finds the narrator worrying about his own wallet. It's hard to appreciate the critique of Jersey-suburban pretense in "Hair" unless you know it's being sung by a post-graduate kid debating whether or not to capitulate to material demands. Also, as Hilary recently pointed out to me, why is The Mother called The Mother? If the mechanic is the grandfather (because he's the representative of the working-class past) and the "path" is the story of the grandson's descent into emotional paralysis, shouldn't The Mother be called "the father"? My initial understanding of the three-disc set was that the songs were a chronological jumble -- that we were jumping all over the story from generation to generation, and that The Path was an effort to sync it all up on the therapist's couch. But the more I listen, the more I'm unsure abou that. I think it's possible that Enders's sequencing is savvier than I originally understood it to be, and that certain repetitions -- the acoustic version of "Decoration", for instance -- are there to point out the recursive elements of the storyline and to reinforce the point about the inheritance of the tendency toward casual domestic abuse. There's no reason that Matt (the father, if you're following along at home) wouldn't have felt the same kind of alienation in the grandfather's house as Dean (the son) feels in the home of his maternal grandparents. I also wish I'd discussed the social conservatism of The Mother, The Mechanic, and The Path: how the moral of the story is a near-Christian insistence on male familial responsibility and the need to sublimate personal desires and accomplishments in order to attain community cohesion. Matt starts out by running away from an abusive home -- but then he keeps on running, painting the walls with his accomplishments, wanting only for himself. This becomes Dean's defining characteristic, too. I don't think I said enough about how very Jersey this album is: that although there's nothing about these stories that ground them anywhere other than a generic suburb, the album still feels like a Garden State story, complete with all the defensiveness, miscommunication, recalcitrance, unwillingness to compromise, no-bullshit straight-talk, and interpersonal fragmentation that we've come to expect from our homegrown fairytales. I still think it's New Jersey's answer to 69 Love Songs, even if nobody in New York is listening.

 

The Fiery Furnaces -- "Benton Harbor Blues"
Speaking of grandparents, the most fearless family act in pop music returns from their own Michener trip to deliver a couple of sets that are, by their own wordy and allusive standards, pretty darned straightforward. Matt Friedberger's Winter Women will make you laugh out loud at the arcane jokes and consult your global atlas, but it's really just a bunch of songs about girls. (The flip CD, on the other hand, is a dreamlike story about setting up a Christian foreign-language school for Chinese businessmen. Really.) Meanwhile, on the Fiery Furnaces's Bitter Tea, sister Eleanor sings a remarkably unadorned and un-footnoted set about coping with a long-distance relationship. Since this is a Friedberger, Inc. project, there are all kinds of flights of fancy and children's stories and analogies drawn to safety-deposit box scams and international gambling sprees, but most of the affective action takes place in the narrator's "little thatched hut" as she waits for her true love to return to her. It's almost emo. Well, not really, but I had you going there for a second, didn't I? "Benton Harbor Blues" appears on the album in two versions -- the first is full of fizzy analog synth runs and backward masking. But the second time out, they give it to you straight: sad girl, economically-depressed town, time passing, no break in the waiting. After Bitter Tea, anybody who tells you they don't understand the Fiery Furnaces isn't trying.

 

The Fray -- "How To Save A Life"
It's nice that rock dudes are no longer treating the piano like it has cooties on it. But if all we ever use them for is to bang out rehashed versions of "Clocks", is that really progress? This earnest Rocky Mountain quartet makes matters worse by succumbing to Rick Ross disease, rhyming "right" with "right", "talk" with "talk", "best" with "best", and "what's wrong" with "all along". Wasting a great rock and roll handle, Isaac Slade wails it all in a glass-shattering falsetto. Stick with the All-American Rejects; at least they know how to control dynamics.

 

The Futureheads -- "Skip To The End", "Worry About It Later"
You can take those XTC comparisons and punt them straight out the window. On News And Tributes, The Futureheads have come up with a small-combo algebra all their own: nervous-dub rhythm section, paint-splatter guitar, strummed acoustic, and tight, 'verbed-out four-part harmonies. If Barry Hyde still sings a little bit like Andy Partridge, blame it on the used record stores in Sunderland; his band now sounds more like Yes circa 90125. I keep halfway expecting them to break into "Leave It". Their label rewarded their attainment of sonic coherence by serving the band with a pink slip. Oh, those crazy Brits.

 

The Game -- "One Blood", "Let's Ride"
Sorry, Mr. West, you're no longer the most emo man in hip-hop. Jayceon Taylor sobs his way through The Doctor's Advocate, apologizing to everybody he's ever met, right before threatening to kill them all. It's as if Chris Carraba went "hard" and decided to put out a g-rap album. Now, The Game has always been an angst-ridden emcee, so this is perhaps unsurprising. He's also the closest thing we have to a music critic on the mic, dishing out reviews to his peers and constantly checking his own work against the canon. "One Blood" is the A-Town assessment and he finds it lacking; for some reason, though, he "makes room for Jeezy". He names names. "I don't regret what I spit", he insists, "because I know what I say". Fair enough; if he's not worried about a beatdown or the betting pool now taking guesses about, um, how long he's got, I'm not going to lose any sleep for him. You can hear the nasty side of this approach on "Wouldn't Get Far", in which he and Kan the Louis Vuitton Don call out unsuspecting video girls and accuse them of sleeping their way to the top. It's one of the meanest things I've ever heard anybody do on wax, and not just because the chicks smeared in the song have no means to retaliate. And we haven't even discussed how weird it is that the Game names his album after the producer who he broke with, records a weeper begging his old mentor for forgiveness, and then spends the rest of the songs treating Dre like he's already dead. "I'm the reincarnation of Dre", I'm the manifestation of Dre in his heyday", "If you knew Dre, you would say I was the new Dre". Etcetera. Game even sounds like Dre now. Imagine that you're Dre, and you're hearing Jayceon pull this Single White Female act on you. Might you not consider beefing up your security squad? I'm not sure if The Game is quite so out of control when he's away from the studio -- he might just be the sort of guy who just goes batshit when you put a mic in his hand. Still, were I a Compton resident, I'd be giving this guy a wide berth.

 

The Heavy Blinkers -- "Try Telling That To My Baby"
Do you find the hype about "the Canadian invasion" as irritating as I do? Canada is a big country with lots of permafrost; some of those bands trapped under the ice are bound to be good. There does seem to be a greater tolerance for cutesy-pootsy pop and whimsy north of the border -- The Pursuit Of Happiness was a Canadian band, so 'nuf said. We've been at war with everybody for four years, we're destroying the globe with fuel emissions, and we're sick of it all; we're even sick of hearing about it. Is it any wonder that we've grown susceptible to this Kevin Ayers-type childlike nonsense? I myself would rather hear the Heavy Blinkers sing their sub-Bacharach numbers than John Cougar Mellencamp going on about how "This Is My Country", but check back with me in a few years, and I may tell you something different. It all depends on how nice on the mic Nancy Pelosi manages to be.

 

The Hold Steady -- "Chips Ahoy!"
It's hard to go wrong with a song about racehorses and sexual frustration. Craig Finn is singing more these days, and that's maybe not so good, but he's giving it his best. His inner Minneapolitan comes out here and there -- on "Chips Ahoy", I find him a vocal dead ringer for Bob Mould. The sedate Bob Mould, I mean; there's no way Finn could ever scream like New Day Rising and live to tell about it. I try never to post links to YouTube (unless it's this) but if you haven't seen it yet, the "Chips Ahoy" video really gets at something crucial about the Hold Steady and Finn in particular. Plenty of pop singers deliberately evoke television action heroes in their clips. But it's the rare rock dude who is confident enough to cast himself as the Les Nessman of indie rock.

 

The Killers -- "When You Were Young", "Bones"
A pretty good indication that these guys are going to be sticking around for awhile. The '04-'05 singles were amusing, but vapid; these two, from Sam's Town, ain't perfect, but they're properly reckless and memorable. In pop music, that counts for plenty. Smart money says they've got more up their sleeves.

 

The Organ -- "Love, Love, Love", "Memorize The City"
Wow, I got through the entries for The Hold Steady and The Killers -- back to back, no less -- and I didn't mention a Certain Famous Turnpike Rocker. I give me props. Here I am, under the X-mas tree on a cloudy December morning, almost done with another one of these here Abstracts, dreading the prospect of re-reading anything I've written over the past couple of days. I just let God handle the delete key when I do these; I figure that's salutary, and maybe in its way, it can serve as a small counterweight to the serious and uptight monster that music writing on the Internet has become. When I started writing Pop Music Abstracts in 1999, I barely showed them to anybody. Back then, there were very few websites that did song-by-song recaps of pop radio, and part of the joke of me doing it (at least to me) was that it's an intrinsically silly thing to do. Now, there are major commercial websites that review every MP3 cut in hipster circulation, and an indie publicity industry that mostly exists to make sure that your band gets reviewed by those sites. Some of them even contact me. There's nothing particularly fascinating about The Organ, but were the Organ to put out a new single tomorrow, twenty mainstream rock-crit websites would race to post a review of it and to assign it a star or letter grade. The result of this is that in some small segments of the music industry, analysis is actually outpacing consumption. For many hipsters with MP3 weblogs and last.fm plug-ins, analysis, tastemaking, and "favoriting" is actually taking the place of consumption. This is bad news for the music industry, but it's fantastic for those who are looking to use the web to establish new review, classification and ranking mechanisms for the world's aggregate of information. In the future, it's going to be possible to fit every piece of music ever recorded onto a small chip in your handset. The business end of the equation, so to speak, isn't going to be about delivering that content, because it's all going to come pre-delivered. It's going to be about navigating the content that's already in there, and using pre-established patterns of preferences to guide the listener to what he or she already wants. We don't have that technology yet, and we're still laboring under the quaint delusion that our opinions and preferences are our own. At the moment, the genome-mapping of American tastes is far from complete, and the hipster dominance of music discourse is creating some serious distortions in the fabric of our understanding of the landscape. For instance, Shinedown has sold about a gazillion copies of their albums; you've never heard them, and neither have I. But chances are, you know The Organ, even though they've barely raked in enough royalties to buy enough gas to get the old band van across Ontario. MySpace, Soundclick, and social-networking sites flatten the hipster curve; new emo-pop bands like Say Anything and The Starting Line now rely on cross-referencing, peer review, and classification systems to deliver "friends" to their profiles in the thousands. That translates into record sales and a higher profile within a certain Bamboozle-attending, Warped-Tour-following subculture. Still, those albums don't get reviewed on any of the mainstream commercial sites, no matter how well-crafted they are -- and many of them are extremely well-crafted. It creates the illusion that Danielson is more prominent than Forgive Durden, and of course that isn't true. Never in my lifetime has mainstream music criticism been so wildly at variance with what Americans actually listen to. I don't hear very much emo, either, but I'm not your standard hipster -- unlike certain bigmouth white-guy journalists, I'm not a come-lately to rap music. Rap is the music I was born to, and the frame of reference through which I see just about everything. So I do hope that in my own counter-demographic way, I can send a few ripples through the grid and create a little distortion, land a punch for all the chaotic-neutrals out there as the world of the known gets further codified. But at the same time, I'm not totally stupid, and nor do I have much faith in my own ability to break out of my own self-encouraged stereotypes. We know for a fact that 50 Cent uses the same music-intelligence services that C&W superstars do, and that computer-evaluation of potential radio singles is probably already the industry norm. Music-intelligence databases have digested tens of thousands of hits, and the computers can now identify harmonic patterns and production techniques that translate into positive human response. Eventually, the artist is going to drop out of this equation altogether, or become comfortable with his role as a technician, sticking different keys into human pleasure centers and eliciting responses commensurate with the receptors stimulated. (Yes, yes, I know, it's like The Matrix.) For all we know, this has already happened, and the past twenty-thousand words I've written were all scripted for me in Sony Music Labs. Like much of everything else we're faced with in this 2006 history, Philip Dick saw it coming: and database companies are racing to insure that pop music becomes nothing more than a process of pulling out certain stops on a giant Penfield Mood Organ. Once more, this is not a conspiracy theory; this is what people want, most of them, anyway. The corporations and information-organizers are just trying to meet consumer demand for a seamless life experience. The black iron prison is now made out of drywall; it's carpeted and well-lit, and there are water-coolers and comfortable couches in every corner. And then a voice comes on; not over the loudspeaker, but right there on your portable MP3 player. It's telling you to sit down, get comfortable; it's going to be awhile.

 

The Pack -- "Vans"
Bay area rappers go Mr. Collipark one better: not only have they replaced the snare drum with a snap, but the kick has been swapped out, too. In its place is a frequency-spectrum-saturating raspberry that sounds a bit like the noise old Macintoshes used to make when they reported a computer error. Thus, "Vans": yet another cheaply-made regional hit that blew up nationally because of 'net-hysteria. No company put these kids up to recording this three-minute commercial -- they just loved their shoes, got on the mic, and told the world about it. Look for more of this in years to come: ad execs functioning less like content-providers and more like talent scouts, combing video-sharing sites for homemade clips. Turns out the joke was on us ideology critics: there was never any need for capitalist brainwashing or corporate mind-control. Left to their own devices, people will still want to be part of the media vanguard and information-distribution apparatus. In the process, some of them will even come up with tracks that are hype, or even hyphy. (That said, after selling "Wraith Pinned To The Mist And Other Games" to Outback Steakhouse -- a symbol of American overconsumption -- I can no longer take Kevin Barnes seriously as a cultural critic, and maybe as an artist as well. "Forgotten fascist future", indeed.)

 

The Roots -- "Don't Feel Right"
Not to steal Phife's line, but the first time I heard this, I really did think it was Megadeth, or something quite like it. Then Tariq Trotter started to rhyme, and it was right back to that grim-faced Philadelphian nonsense. The most joyless act in popular music.

 

The Stills -- "Destroyer", "In The Beginning"
Back in 2002, I saw the Stills play at Luxx in Williamsburg. They'd done some recording with J at Melody Lanes, they had an EP out called Rememberese, and nobody knew very much about them beyond the articles in Vice. I felt like I'd stumbled into a photo shoot -- the band barely moved, and all the songs were loud and uniform and took no chances at all. There was nothing about that performance to suggest that anyone in the group had any special instrumental talent, or that they were interested in showing it off if they had. Stills album #1 felt right in line with the concert I'd seen. I dismissed them as another Brooklyn dance-rock hype job. So what did they do next? Well, they retreated to Montreal, swapped instruments, added an organist, and returned to Gotham as a junior-grade version of The Band, or maybe The Kinks after they went pastoral. They picked up a horn section, too, and put it to great use on "Destroyer". It's not a total transformation: the new songs are still built the way the old ones were, they're just produced and arranged differently. But the Stills have backed up their classic-rock aspirations with musical performances that suggest real talent and instrumental vision. I don't know whether they developed chops in the years since Logic Will Break Your Heart, or if they always had them but were suppressing them for the sake of Williamsburg cool. What's important is that it's all there now, and preserved for posterity on Without Feathers. Never dismiss anybody in this game -- especially not kids. You never know who's going to surprise you.

 

The Streets -- "Never Went To Church", "When You Wasn't Famous"
Neither of these is what you think it is. The lead single purports to be a lighthearted look at a blind-item pop singer who smoked crack in front of Mike Skinner, but upon closer inspection, it turns out to be a vicious broadside against the star system and the cannibalism of celebrity culture. All the British press wanted to know was who he was rapping about, of course, and as Skinner points out in "Two Nations", nobody in the U.S. cares about him anyway. And that isn't likely to change. "Never Went To Church" doesn't mock religion or celebrate secular hedonism -- it's a moving elegy for Skinner's father. Unlike the narratives on A Grand Don't Come For Free, all of which felt a bit contrived or at least trimmed to fit the story-arc (not that I complained), these new Streets numbers are nasty, honest, bitter, and substantially unhinged. Based on the recorded evidence, I consider Skinner the most likely pop musician to suddenly undergo a conversion to Christianity. He's already got the main idea down -- on "It All Goes Out The Window", he has pastor Ted Mayhem sing, straight to him, "you'll always be/ a bad person".

 

Thicke -- "Wanna Love You Girl", "Lost Without U"
After Cherry Blue Skies disappeared without a trace, Robin Thicke's three fans wondered if they'd ever hear from him again. I was the most pessimistic of the three: I just couldn't see how he'd ever fit in with contemporary radio. But it turned out that another two were Lil Wayne and Pharrell Williams. Those guys had a plan. Weezy's idea was to dress up "Oh Shooter" as a rap-soul hybrid, which was good; Pharrell just smoothed him out and allowed him to do what he does over typical Neptunes production, which was better. I'm sure he's not trying to hear this, but he reminds me most of Daryl Hall: a cross-cultural love-man stance, a certain whiny toughness, and a falsetto that won't hurt you one bit. I promise.

 

Three 6 Mafia -- "Poppin' My Collar"
True Jersey City Stories, vol. XXXVIII: waiting for the light rail at Marin Boulevard, right across from the football pitch. Four well-scrubbed Catholic boys, just released from St. Peter's Prep, hop onto the platform. They're all Three 6 Mafia fans, or at least fans of "Poppin' My Collar", because they're chanting the chorus and trying to look as tough as they can: "ever since I can remember, I've been poppin' my collar/ pop' poppin my collar", all in unison. One demonstrates by going to his button-down shirt and flipping the collar up. The biggest one turns to him and remonstrates him for his ignorance; that's not what they mean by "poppin' my collar", don't you know anything, Pete? At this point, I was inclined to intervene -- no, that is exactly what the Three 6 Mafia mean. Pete is right, you are wrong, Pete is a true pimp, and you are just a wanksta/ and you need to stop fronting. I stepped back and caught myself: a thirtysomething Caucasian hipster, ready to lecture a thirteen-year-old white bully on the essence of black Memphis slang. Luckily for everybody, the train came. I validated my ticket and took a seat.

 

Unk -- "Walk It Out"
The "walk it out" is a version of the "lean wit it, rock wit it" dance; again, hit the YouTube if you really want specifics. Like many of the new net-hoppers, Unk was originally known as a deejay. File-sharing and social-networking is putting the cutmaster-curator back on the map: you can create a dance and market it straight to the kids, set up a deal with Koch Entertainment, and set yourself up as a regional impresario. The dictatorial regime of the all-powerful emcee has held long enough; hip-hop is not an athletic competition and nor should it ever have been. In a bedroom in those ugly new houses, a teenager dances her legs down to her knees; knowing that the music that matters is the music that matters to those to whom music matters. Expect the skills fascists (Game included) to keep coming down hard on all this stuff. It won't make any difference. They can huff and puff, but they won't blow the Unk down.

 

Webstar, Young B, & The Voice Of Harlem -- "Chicken Noodle Soup"
This is the story of how we begin to remember/ This is the powerful pulsing of love in the vein/ After the dream of falling and calling your name out/ These are the roots of rhythm/ and the roots of rhythm remain.

 

"Weird Al" Yankovic -- "White & Nerdy"
Sure, he's done this one before; "All About The Pentiums" was basically the same joke. If you need a guy to run down the litany of geek stereotypes, Yankovic's your man. But a rising YouTube tide lifted his leaky boat, too, and Weird Al washed up in the Top 40 for the first time ever. When you think about it, the current climate is perfect for Yankovic: social-networking sites are all about cheap spoofs, and Weird Al has mastered the art of tiptoeing around the censors. I know he's been around forever, but he might just be getting started.

 

Young Dro & T.I. -- "Shoulder Lean"
Now here's a dance you can do with your car. Or in your car, depending on how recklessly you want to drive. Those Atlanta streets are pretty wide, I hear, and there's more margin for error down there. Houston has its cars swangin' from sidewalk to sidewalk and neon gleaming from popped trunks, Bay Area hyphy cats like to ghostwalk with the front doors open, and L.A. has its low-riders, of course. "Bounce like you got hydraulics in your g-string", raps Game on "Let's Ride", and the metaphor works so well because we've always conflated the backs of cars with the human bee-hind. Shoes and tires go together, too, so when The Pack rhyme about their sneakers and their skateboards on "Vans", they're conflating their feet with their wheels. (Grills go with grills, of course.) White kids in Jersey used to do doughnuts in the parking lots of strip-malls. That hardly had the charm or style of a cherry-red Impala with the top down and switch thrown, or a candy-colored Cadillac, but we did what we could; we couldn't rhyme, either. Meanwhile, I take public transportation. No wonder I never feel at home in America.

 

Young Jeezy -- "My Hood"
Maybe I need to listen to an entire album from start to finish. Jeezy doesn't seem to do anything that a thousand other emcees don't also do. Word on him is that he's managed to hone the hustling=upward social mobility metaphor to a heretofore unseen sharpness, but after Get Rich Or Die Trying, I'm not convinced there was anywhere to go. I also find his allegedly wonderful personality and his rakish charisma difficult to locate. These songs of his are always decent, but I never exactly walk away from them all pumped up in the way he'd like me to be. In the early nineties, there was an Upstate New York emcee called Modavador G who actually was a Christian motivational speaker; Jeezy does better with a mass audience because it's more fun to imagine you're "on the grind" when you're slaving away at your nine-to-five. Every day you're hustling, and all that.

 

Yung Joc -- "It's Going Down", "I Know You See It"
On Route 78 going east, right around Hillside, there's a billboard that reads "your phone is now your music!" Hopefully, it'll never come to that, but as we hardworking rockers all know, ringtone sales are now the largest segment of the music industry. Surely 2006 was the end of many things and the beginning of many more, but to find out exactly what, we'll all have to live another decade or so. I'm up for it if you are. Much handwriting on the wall has been scribbled in day-glo: we know damned well that the era of the record store is over, that the network grid is the main distribution system for pop music, and with expanded bandwidth comes new ways of organizing and classifying both the records we listen to and the people who are doing the listening. J.R. Taylor was nice enough to send me a tip earlier this week -- he'd been to the close-out sale at Tower Records in Paramus, and he'd noticed that rap CDs were going for $2 a pop. When we got there, they'd been marked down even further: $1.50, and dropping, for everything in the genre. Most of the racks had been picked over, but there were still plenty of unwanted records left; compilations, independent releases, screwed and chopped versions, Miami bass albums from the mid-Nineties. Mr. Lif's excellent Mo' Mega was there, stacked up in a corner and facing away from Route 17. I noticed nobody wanted Pimpalation, either; a terrible shame, in a way. So much sweat goes into making these joints, packaging them, taking the snapshots, stuffing it all into plastic jewel cases, and now they were backing up the truck and taking it all to the dump. As I stacked record on top of record, I felt like I was present at the bonfire of the music industry, or perhaps catching a glimpse of the inevitable future where the record album is a museum-piece and sound files slip away from those who try to fit them with price tags, like greased pigs at a rodeo. On "Raw Hide", ODB famously asked "who the fuck would want to be an emcee/ if you can't get paid to be a fucking emcee?" At the time, we all thought it was rhetorical. The prophet won't be around to get an answer to his question, but the rest of us are about to find out. I grabbed some unspeakable Lil Keke mixtape from 2002, put it on top of the pile, and headed to the cash register for the final time.

Promiscuous e-mailer, we're one and the same, so we don't got to play games no more.