TRICKY – Maxinquaye
Now don’t get me wrong, I’m the first to champion eyeshadow wearing Original Gangsta’s from the suburbs of the Stapleton region of Bristol, especially when they are lauded for doing pretty much what Massive Attack do without the rubbish Horace Andy tracks and moody instumentals. And I loved the singles “Ponderosa” and “Aftermath” to death. But this album is genuinely unlistenable. Not only does it take one of P.E.’s most stirring polemics and turn it into a young girl being a wee bit pissed off about not getting her giro on time, it also has a second half that takes the dirge out of dirigible and then deflates it. The cocking of a pistol may be a nice percussive sound (I believe one of the monkeys finds this out in Disney’s Tarzan) but a backing track it makes not. Most of the 90s album lists put this down as the only true triumph of British rap (he mumbles, is Tom Waits a rapper?), and a piece of genius from the darkest points of the imagination. Actually its a Bristol lad who was slightly gender confused and loved his nan too much.