Average: 3.53 Controversy: 2.28
NW:You could slag Puffy for having the nerve to sample PE, but that’s a bit like getting on Mel C’s case for covering the Sex Pistols. Nothing should really be sacred, and I’d much rather hear a PE sa[…]

Average: 3.88 Controversy: 2.85
JM: Come and have a go if you think you’re bad enough. 9
KG: Rap at its most gloriously funny. 7
MD: Nas says he can’t stop now, but really, where can one go from this kind of baroque megalomania? Nowhere b[…]

Average: 4.08 Controversy: 2.36
Nobody felt particularly eloquent about poor Jen. Which possibly speaks for itself[…]

Average: 4.26 Controversy: 3.17
IS: She is great. It is great. 10
AE: Devilishly catchy number, showing maturing of Spice Value System into ultimate form of Hedonistic Me-Child. EXCELLENT. Hasn’t done anything even remotely good since. 9
MA: It[…]

Average: 4.27 Controversy: 2.83
KA: Not as good as Britney but those Yanks sure know how to POP! 8
TE: Nice vacuum-packed beats which sound like someone’s sampled the sound of bubble-wrap being squeezed. And that’s about all you can say f[…]

Average: 4.31 Controversy: 2.75
MA: Nothing wrong with a weak song that a pretty voice can’t revive. 7
GE: Can you destroy a record by faint praise? 7
KA: Isn’t that by the Corrs? 4
NW: It simply tries too hard to be adorable. 1[…]

Average: 4.34 Controversy: 2.36
GE: Great fun. Reminds me of “Reward” by the Teardrop Explodes, if they’d have had any Spanish blood in them maybe? 8
DS: Perhaps the defining record of the year holidaymakers decided what went in the[…]

Average: 4.38 Controversy: 2.18
GF: It’s an Adam Ant rip-off (“Hell’s Eight Acres”) so obviously pretty fly!8
DS: I try as hard as I can to hate this, but I can’t. 7
FS: Would have had more sting if the Offspring weren&#[…]

Average: 4.6 Controversy: 1.9
GF: I still don’t know what to make of it…so it must be good! 7
TE: It’s a funny, wise, odd little tune, but in amongst all this pop it seems kind of lost. 6
PB: If I had bought it, I’d probably l[…]

Average: 4.63 Controversy: 2.86
KA: Definitive choon of Summer ’99. 9
DS: Is this the one that sounds like a nose-flute? I think I like this. 7
MD: Seems like standard issue trance until the uncharacteristically pretty middle. Could be a grower[…]