Only one person to knock the Kitten off the top spot? Who could it be? Oh, well, would you believe it was Shaggy after all? He was just kidding all along. Still, that argument’s never going to hold up in a court of law, is it Shag? Of course, we’ll all be so fed up with it in a couple of months’ time, but that’s the beauty of the UK charts: we’ll forgive the man “Oh Carolina” to such an extent that we’ll play his return to form until the hook’s a catchphrase to rival “You ARE the Weakest Link…”

Atomic Kitten and OutKast fall a place each, with the CIN simply commenting that “Whole Again” had still sold, quote, “shitloads” this week.

Winner of the award for “most inoffensively dull track of the week” (an honour previously held by Samantha Mumba, who falls 4 places to number 7) is “Nobody Wants To Be Lonely” by Ricky Martin & Christina Aguilera. The title is true, I suppose, but I’d still rather be lonely than try to recall the melody of that one.

“I am like a bird,” says Nelly Furtado, which presumably means that he isn’t one, as he gender-bends his way into number 5. He had me fooled. That thing about the big hands and Adam’s apple giving it away must not be true after all…

Kaci manages a surprisingly high entry at number 11 (I thought we’d sorted out the chart-rigging thing?) but to be honest only Tom cares, and even he’s still occupied with his Mandy Moore singles.

Flick Scully-endorsed boyband Human Nature may be disappointed with number 18, but perhaps with the Backstreet Boys, *NSYNC, 5ive, a1, Point Break and Westlife’s new rock-influenced(!) direction, the British public have had enough of bouncily-dancing boys with spiky/floppy hair?

The Divine Comedy can only manage an ignominious 26th, with Caprice‘s “Once Around The Sun” slotting in just above it at 24. They’ve always been that little bit too smug to be included in most people’s record collections.

At least one of Blaze (53), St Germain (54), Ian Pooley (57), Bulletproof (62), Bini & Martini (65) and Medway (crashing into the top 68 at number 67), none of which I’ve heard, must be shit, which may very well signal the beginning of the end for shit trance riding high on the UK chart. Seeing as hard house is the next big thing (it must be – I’ve been saying so for about 3 years since I read it in a copy of Mixmag), perhaps we’ll get the good hard house next and avoid the shit stuff for the time being?

Not that we normally cover the album charts, but this week’s are particularly horrible: Dido propping up a bunch of chancers including Coldplay, Anastacia, the Fun Lovin’ Criminals, Toploader and David Gray. Only Eminem and Craig David offer a glimmer of hope.

Well, that’s it for another week’s Pop Eye. What? Was there another big story in the charts this week? I almost forgot. Quote this, you fuckers:

“THE MANIC STREET PREACHERS WOULD ONLY HAVE REACHED NUMBER THREE IN THE UK CHARTS WITH THE COMBINED SALES OF THEIR TWO SINGLES. WHAT MAKES IT EVEN BETTER IS THAT THEY PUT THE RELEASES FORWARD A WEEK TO AVOID COMPETITION FROM WESTLIFE FOR THE NUMBER ONE. SHOULD HAVE TAKEN THOSE OTHER SEVEN SINGLES INTO ACCOUNT, TOO.” – GREG

To beat the lyrics to “Bring The Noise” to the top spot would surely take something a bit special? Yes, and so it’s obviously got to be something obscure so that I can feel proud of myself for liking a less popular rapper than you do. No, sometimes the accepted truth actually is right:

Thinkin of a master plan
Cos ain’t nuthin but sweat inside my hand
So I dig into my pocket, all my money is spent
So I dig deeper but still comin up with lint
So I start my mission, leave my residence
Thinkin how could I get some dead presidents?
I need money, I used to be a stick-up kid
So I think of all the devious things I did
I used to roll up, this is a hold up, ain’t nothin’ funny
Stop smiling, be still, don’t nothin’ move but the money
But now I learned to earn cos I’m righteous
I feel great so maybe I might just
Search for a 9 to 5, if I strive
Then maybe I’ll stay alive…

Is “Bring The Noise” one of Public Enemy’s best tracks? Yes. Is it one of Chuck D’s best raps? Oh yes. Every time I rediscover “It Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back” it stuns me, and that’s got to be something to be proud of in an album released ten years ago. This will always be incredible:

Now they got me in a cell ’cause my records they sell
Cos a brother like me said “Well…
Farrakhan’s a prophet and I think you ought to listen to
what he can say to you, what you ought to do.”

Whatcha gonna do? Rap is not afraid of you
Beat is for Sonny Bono, beat is for Yoko Ono
Run-DMC first said a DJ could be a band
Stand on its feet, get you out your seat
Beat is for Eric B, and L.L. as well, hell
Wax is for Anthrax, still it can rock bells
Ever forever, universal, it will sell
Time for me to exit, Terminator X it…

The most talked-about unreleased album in hip hop is set to be released next week. Too late for the Christmas market, too late for the end-of-year polls, too early for the post-Christmas lull, too early for the post-Christmas disposable teenage income: what’s the point? The point is that the album’s shaping up to be one of the best hip hop releases of the year, and a very important progression in the story of Dre, Snoop, NWA and Eminem.

Never being a weblog to advocate the use of file-sharing programs such as Napster, it’d be unfair to comment on the leaked demos or the pre-release promos that we hear have been made available for download. However, I will say that on the basis of the song titles listed, the album looks like being excellent. With the usual special guest stars appearing, it’s like it’s 1993 all over again.

Also, Snoop’s raps sound better than they have since “Doggystyle”. Oops.

Like almost all the best music, this song defies adequate description short of demanding that anyone with the slightest interest in hip hop must have a listen. The Souls Of Mischief have never and probably will never be this good again.

With the exception of K Gee’s minor success with his single “I Don’t Really Care”, bounce is generally unheard of in the UK. K Gee will also probably be aware that the success of his single had very little to do with the fans’ interest in the trans-Atlantic crossover of a new genre, but the fact that there were thongs in the video and the lyrics included: “BIG BOOTY GIRLS! BIG BOOTY GIRLS!”

The US reader may switch off here. All other readers, on the other hand, would be advised to seek out Juvenile’s “Back That Azz Up” and BG’s “Bling Bling”, both reasonably large hits in the US, as far as I’m aware. Distinctive for its deafening (in a non-volume sense) drum-machine beats and shamelessly materialistic lyrics, bounce seems to me to be ideal for the UK market, where similarly progressive genres (i.e. UK Garage et al) have little difficulty in achieving crossover success, and where a bit of talk about expensive jewellery and being a playa surely wouldn’t be a disadvantage among Oxfordshire’s wannabe playas.

Based on a similar premise to Common Sense’s “i used to love h.e.r.”, “One Day” clocks in at just over two minutes long and in that time summarises the current state of hip hop and allows Jeru to offer himself (and, playing the role of the sidekick and producer, DJ Premier) as a solution:

If I recall correctly I last saw Hip Hop down at Bad Boy
We’ll see if Puff knows what’s up
Cos he’s the one getting him drunk and fucking his mind up
We go to the office, he’s nowhere to be found
So we snatch up Jay Black and beat his bitch ass down
“Now where’s Hip Hop?!” “A’ight, a’ight…” he confessed:
“Suge came and took him from Puff last night,
He said he’d give him up if a real nigga came to retrieve him…”
So we went to LA later that evening
When we got there, everything was a’ight
And we brought Hip Hop back home that night

I’d like to claim there was a great significance to these films. I’d like to claim that seeing them changed my life. I’d like to claim they’re at least famous or respected among more than a tiny percentage of the world’s cinema fans. As it is, you’ll have to settle for the fact that they’re classic kung fu films and probably the basis of the Wu Tang Clan as we know them.

Both films are not only inspirational insights into the philosophy which drove the Shaolin temples and spawned the Wu Tang Clan (an aspect which I’d love to go into but I feel I wouldn’t do justice – to understand how it all fits together watch the films and then listen to the first Wu Tang album), but the source of a massive number of the samples which give the Wu-affiliated tracks that inimitable sense of kung fu-ness.

“There are only 35 chambers. There is no 36th.”
“I know that, but I want to create a new chamber.”

After DJ Premier’s subtle tweaking, “Juicy” was the track it should originally have been. The slightly more propulsive beat allowed the rhythm and phrasing of Biggie’s raps to come to the fore and revealed the lyrics to a much greater extent:

Super Nintendo, Sega Genesis
When I was dead broke, man I couldn’t picture this
50 inch screen, money green leather sofa
Got two rides, a limousine with a chauffeur
Phone bill about two G’s flat
No need to worry, my accountant handles that
And my whole crew is loungin’
Celebratin’ every day, no more public housin’
Thinking back on my one-room shack
Now my mom pimps a Ac’ with minks on her back
And she loves to show me off, of course
Smiles every time my face is up in The Source
We used to fuss when the landlord dissed us
No heat, wonder why Christmas missed us
Birthdays was the worst days
Now we sip champagne when we’re thirst-ay
Uh, damn right I like the life I live
Cause I went from negative to positive
And it’s all… it’s all good

However unlikely it may seem to him, there may come a time when Jimmy Page’s income comes mainly from royalties derived from hip hop fans who have never even heard a note of his guitar playing, never mind having any interest in it. When B Real of Cypress Hill cited Led Zeppelin’s “Kashmir” as his favourite track to chill out to, he was representing a whole new generation of hip hop and rap fans who see this kind of classic rock beat as a slightly different but equally interesting version of the hip hop beats they already know. Where did they first hear them? The same records that are giving Page his royalties: the hip hop records that sample rock beats. Whether it’s from a Beastie Boys fan listening to Led Zep after hearing that their beats were good or a Cypress Hill fan listening to Black Sabbath after the band sampled them and recommended them, the lines between rock and hip hop/rap have been broken down and gradually spawned the rock/rap we’re seeing now.

Sampling is almost undoubtedly the biggest factor involved in the blurring of the rock/rap distinction. Is there any great chance that such a large and significant number of young hip hop fans would suddenly have chosen to listen to “When The Levee Breaks”, “Kashmir”, “The Crunge”, Rush’s “Tom Sawyer”, or Black Sabbath’s “The Wizard” without them being re-interpreted by the Beasties, Cypress Hill, De La Soul, the Ultramagnetic MCs or Puff Daddy first? I doubt it.

(Note: “top 10″ does not imply “top 10 songs”.)

10. Song: 2Pac – “Do For Love”

As Jeff Chang discusses in this archived article from the San Francisco Bay Guardian, few hip hop artists have been successful in producing a mixture of hard and soft output while retaining respect for both aspects of their work. Tupac Shakur is perhaps a rather extreme example of this, since his harder tracks were some of the hardest records being made and his soft tracks some of the most poignant. The fact that “Troublesome ’96″ (part of a set of previous NYLPM favourites and one of the most spiteful tracks officially released by Shakur) is immediately followed by the teenage pregnancy warning (“Let me show you how it affects our whole community…”) of “Brenda’s Got A Baby” on his Greatest Hits compilation is a reflection of the breadth of the subjects covered by his work.

“Do For Love” is a beautiful, reflective track built around a sample of Bobby Caldwell’s 1978 track “What You Won’t Do For Love”. A cynic might suggest that 2Pac, rather than being a good rapper, was (on record) a great actor who was also able to rap. Either way you view his work, though, there’s always the sense that 2Pac was using dramatic techniques (in the same way that the classic soul vocalists delved into the song until the lyrical and melodic emotion was real rather than implied) to bring the extra edge to his best raps. On the basis of “Do For Love”, it’s hard to argue.

Tell me who knows a peaceful place where I can go
To clear my head I’m feeling low, losing control
My heart is saying leave, oh what a tangled web we weave
When we conspire to conceive, and now
You’re getting calls at the house, guess you cheating
That’s all I need to hear cause I’m leaving, I’m out the door
Never no more will you see me, this is the end
Cause now I know you’ve been cheating, I’m a sucker for love

I don’t think we’ve linked to Spine before, which is a shame because it’s a good zine. It’s nice to see UK writers looking at hip hop from an independent UK perspective rather than following the American opinions on things. It seems such an easy thing to do but the proportion of sites that cover hip hop with the “This is the big thing in the US right now” attitude is staggering. Especially worthy of investigation are the article on DJ Shadow and Cut Chemist’s phenomenal Brainfreeze CD and the interview with Tanya‘s mate Kid Koala.

To be totally honest, anyone who had thirty-six pairs of Nike Air Max Plus, arranged in colour order would get a link from me. NYLPM was launched as a pop culture blog rather than a pop blog, and as a man sporting a new pair of box-fresh trainers, I can officially state that it’s been sadly lacking in trainer-based content thus far.

The machine’s slender, futuristic design means that there is not a horizontal surface in sight. The top? Rounded off. Useless. The front? All curvy. Useless. To add insult to injury, JPM have fashioned a small rubber area just below the coin slot, about beermat-sized and just perfect to hold a pint glass. The one problem: it’s only at a bloody thirty degree angle, isn’t it? I’ve seen countless pints lost through drunken mis-reading of the inclination of this little resting-spot. (Well, admittedly, I’ve seen 2 pints lost, but that doesn’t stop me being angry.) What’s that little rubbery bed for? Could it hold a bag of nuts if you got it at the right angle? Could a five pence piece be balanced there? To be perfectly honest, I’m not going to be the fool that risks my nuts or fivepence.

At my local, they built a nice little shelf for the job, then promptly moved the quizzer away from it. Do I get the feeling all this trouble could have been solved if they’d just left the damn thing square rather than trying to live up to the idea of the space age?

1. DR DRE – “Lil Ghetto Boy”; on the bus there.
2. SPICE GIRLS – “Holler”; in HMV.
3. BLACK STAR/TALIB KWELI – ?; in a shop (note: this could have been anything but it sounded like it was Talib Kweli. Maybe the Reflection Eternal album?).
4. DR DRE – “Fuck Wit Dre Day”; on the bus home.
5. a1 – “Same Old Brand New You; on Blue Peter
6. DJ H FEAT. STEFY – “I Like It”; at home (one of only three tracks on this list I chose to hear, I bought this because I thought it might be H from Steps. It’s quite good. Still not sure if it’s H).
7. TECHNOHEAD – “I Wanna Be A Hippy”; in the pub (note: cut off after about 15 seconds when the bar staff realised what was on the CD).
8. UNDERWORLD – “Born Slippy”; in the pub (on the jukebox – someone selected it right after Technohead was turned off).
9. ARTFUL DODGER presents CRAIG DAVID – “Re-Rewind (The Crowd Say Bo Selecta)”; in the bowling alley (note: I wasn’t bowling, but playing pool. That’s important).
10. BACCARA – “Yes Sir, I Can Boogie”; on Never Mind The Buzzcocks (when I came home and flicked the telly on).

Conclusion: Tom soundtracks his life; I just listen to music.

Friday, 20th October, 18:00
“I have no interest in the new single by Daft Punk.”

Saturday, 21st October, 18:00
“Well, I was wrong.”

The moment comes just over two minutes in.

“One More Time” kicks off as typical Daft Punk stuff: all effected vocals, big synth sounds and metronomic kick drums. Just when I start to get fed up with the ubiquitous vocoders and think the band have spent the last couple of years churning out more of the same old stuff while “inspiring” Madonna, the majority of the synths drop out. Then the beat goes, and the next minute or so proves to be the best breakdown ever. Well, maybe not, but at the very least it beats anything Darude could come up with. And that’s exactly the point: whether or not this is a classic, it’s a welcome kick up the arse to the countless trance by numbers records of late. Whether it’ll stand the test of time remains to be seen; it certainly has a sizeable chunk of “Stardust”‘s magic formula of disco influences and melancholy-tinged vocals.

“One more time, we’re gonna celebrate. Oh yeah, alright, don’t stop the dancing.”

“Groovejet” is, in effect, no different to recent FatBoy Slim output: it’s obvious and tired and cliched and it’s absolutely fantastic on the dancefloor. The only substantial difference is that FatBoy Slim would not use a vocalist who’d give a performance so thin and dull as Sophie Ellis-Bextor gives on “Groovejet”. Indie fans can make as much of a fuss over the “girl done good” situation which arose, but Sophie is ultimately working as a session singer, and that’s exactly what she sounds like here. If pointing out the fact that Sophie appears on the record gives it indie credibility then who can blame the promoters for doing so? Well, she doesn’t sing it very well but, you know, she used to be in theaudience so it can’t be all that bad, even if it is bloody dance music.

Personally, I’ll dance to it for sure (or would have done before I got fed up of hearing it – about a month before it came out) but I won’t try and pretend it’s anything more than popdance fast food to me. Tom said in his review that “Spiller [has] turned respectable heads.” That’s all great, but it’s those not-at-all-respectable pop kids’ heads that generally get it right, and if “Groovejet” can only manage a week at number one, who are we to argue?