r. kelly pleads case…in song: r. kelly delivered a new single, entitled — no joke — “heaven, i need a hug,” to chicago radio station wgci. listener response has been incredible — the song topped the station’s[…]

Reason to Rock: Rock Music as Art Form: I couldn’t begin to summarise this one.[…]

Can I Get A Witness?: “The duo’s second full-length, Blazing Arrow, not only exposes the bulk of major label hip-hop for the soulless trip(e) that it truly is, but stands head and shoulders above the best that the underground rap nation […]

TOM’S TOP TEN!
Thanks to the usual sources (gabba.net, FilePile, record shops and now SoulSeek, which I’m on under the name “Groke”)
OUTKAST – “Land Of A Million Drums”
UNKNOWN ARTIST – “Dhol Beat[…]

The Beautiful Anthem: Brazil has the best national anthem, sez the Guardian. Is this true? Fingers crossed we only get one more chance to find out this year. It can’t be much worse than England’s inert, interminable offering, the “H[…]

The NYLPM Archives get their six-monthly update. Relive all your favourite pop reviewing moments![…]

You might have noticed that it’s been almost a month since Freaky Trigger got updated. This is squarely down to the World Cup, which has been taking up most of my every morning for the last three weeks, neatly eating up a proportion of time I m[…]

Timbaland: Greatest Pop Producer of the Last 10 Years? (96-Present Division)
People have perpetually been predicting Tim’s falling off since 1998 (cf. Simon Reynolds, et al only a year after his ascendancy — even yours truly was ready to […]

VANESSA CARLTON – “A Thousand Miles”
At first, I wasn’t all that impressed. The Proclaimers were willing to go 1,000 miles – 2,000 miles net (if you count the distances traveled by both brothers, ideally to different wo[…]

A Little Knowledge Is A Dangerous Thing
Why is Rakim good? I asked Google this question and here’s what it told me: “Rakim’s peerless skills on the mic…the greatest MC the genre has known…to use Rakim [on a track] is to […]