Jumping on the bandwagon. And then off again.

There hasn't been a whole lot of hip-hop released this year that's knocked me out, but I've got to agree with the buzz and concede that the new Clipse disc is pretty awesome. My only quibble is that some folks are saying that The Neptunes have salvaged their rep -- since most everything they've done this year has almost sounded like a weak parody of their earlier work -- but I don't think that's really a valid observation. i mean, most of the tunes were recorded almost four years ago, so wouldn't it stand to reason that the new disc almost makes The Neptunes look worse since it emphasises just how far they've slipped?

However, I can think of nothing negative to say about Malice and Pusha-T's rhymes. Now that's street poetry.

Speaking of buzz, the one disc I just can't get down with this year, that everyone else seems to be having a joyous conniption fit over, is Joanna Newsom's Ys. Yes, it is lovely, and pretty, and just the sort of thing you think a crowd might go gonzo over about at a ren faire, but to my ears it's just so much background music punctuated by a voice that might be even more divisive than Bjork's.* I even went back to revisit it after Sasha Frere-Jones' piece in the last New Yorker (which, by the way, is the definition of a good review since it actually persuaded me to reconsider an album I had already written off) but I stand by my original impressions of the album.

Honestly, and this is a terrible thing to say but, if she wasn't so cute I don't think people (and by "people" I of course mean the male dominated music press / online world) would be going quite as ga-ga over her.

*For the record, I like Bjork's voice. After living with Photogal, though, I have discovered that Bjork's pipes can send some folks into an apoplectic rage. Newsom doesn't have quite that drastic an effect upon me, but her vocals do annoy the hell out of me after about ten minutes.