LUMIDEE – “Never Leave You (Uh-Oh)”
People’s antipathy towards this track puzzles me, but then again I can’t think of a more divisive R&B track in recent memory. You either “get it” or you don’t. […]

V/A – “Straight From The Bedroom E.P.’s #1-3
V/A – Lord of the Decks: The Fellowship of the Mic
Straight From The Bedroom was a 3rd Paty/Kemet sub-label that existed for all of three releases, namely these. They are, as far a[…]

Guilty thought: I’d like this song much more as an instrumental or even as a ‘song’, not a rap. Everything just clicks: the processed guitar strum that’s like Shek’spere with dirt under his nails, the string swells, the[…]

RUFFUS – “Eighties Comin’ Back”
Letter perfect Steely-Dan-in-chart-po(m)p-mode, made all the more outrageously decadent and out of place this year by the indescipherable (English) lyrics which remain opaque even after a dozen […]

COLDPLAY – “Clocks”
Surely the fact that I recommend this despite it sounding like a Jam & Spoon remix of David Gray is enough.[…]

DR. RING-DING – “Bombs Over Baghdad”
This starts out in typical dancehall-of-the-apocalypse mode, with the Dr. intoning some of the Ten Commandments, no less (“thou shalt not steal”, “thou shalt not kill”, &#[…]

The dark horse! In the last two weeks this has rocketed up my personal chart to the point where it’s starting to look like a serious threat to those tracks in the top 10 whose future is uncertain. One-bar loop tech-drum&bass bizness, but r[…]

Jess’s Preliminary Top 10 for 2003
Half-way done with the year!
(Please note that this list does not reflect the tastes or choices of NYLPM, it’s owner, or subsidiaries.)
10. !!! – “Me & Giuliani Down By The Schoolyard […]

Wiley’s productions are simultaneously reaching IDM levels of abstraction while being the most dead simple physical records this side of ‘Grindin’. Nothing really happens in 8-bar productions after they make their opening statements[…]

FREEWAY – “What We Do”
Roc-a-fella’s post-ironic smash & grab raids on symphonic soul continue, subverting some musty old relic pinched from Just Blaze’s dad’s basement, one of those off-hand slices of doped a[…]