Play It Loud.Music makes the critics come together in 10 of their top CD picks of the past year New York New York, state, United States New York, Middle Atlantic state of the United States. It is bordered by Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and the Atlantic Ocean (E), New Jersey and Pennsylvania (S), Lakes Erie and Ontario and the Canadian province of Times pop music critics Jon Pareles Jon Pareles is an American journalist who is chief music critic at the arts section of the New York Times. He played flute and graduated from Yale University. Prior to taking up that role, in the 1970s he was an associate editor of Crawdaddy , Ann Powers, Ben Ratliff, and Neil Strauss give you an earful ear·ful n. 1. An abundant or excessive amount of something heard, such as talk or music. 2. Gossip, especially of an intimate or scandalous nature. 3. A scolding or reprimand. on the virtues of Voodoo, the greatness of Grammar, and other top CDs worth a listen. D'ANGELO: Voodoo A long-awaited follow-up to his 1995 debut, Brown Sugar, this sophomore CD is a set of slow, ecstatic funk trances, with one of the most beguiling mixes (curtains of bass and vocals overdubbed five or six times) that a million-selling album has ever had. The subsequent industrywide sprint to sign neo-soul acts like D'Angelo is proof of its vision. --Ben Ratliff RADIOHEAD: Kid A For an album about loneliness so profound it threatens to dissolve identity itself, the British group Radiohead, who last released OK Computer in 1997, all but abandoned its guitars, lyrics, and pop-song dynamics. It came up with gorgeous, multilayered songs, balancing patterns and disruptions, that would seem grandiose if they weren't so genuinely plaintive plain·tive adj. Expressing sorrow; mournful or melancholy. [Middle English plaintif, from Old French, aggrieved, lamenting, from plaint, complaint; see plaint. . --Jon Pareles OUTKAST: Stankonia Music can play sneaky tricks on society, revealing its obsessions in a warped mirror. Outkast's hip-hop psychedelica has its gangsta Noun 1. gangsta - (Black English) a member of a youth gang AAVE, African American English, African American Vernacular English, Black English, Black English Vernacular, Black Vernacular, Black Vernacular English, Ebonics - a nonstandard form of American English fantasies and eats them, too, as the first-class tricksters Andre and Big Boi revel in self-awareness. --Ann Powers U2: All That You Can't Leave Behind The Edge, Adam Clayton, and Larry Mullen return to spirit-raising, guitar-loving, stick-and-drum-banging rock `n' roll, while singer Bono sets aside his worries about Kmart culture to tackle greater problems vying for the human soul. A powerful, uplifting album that doubles as a self-help manual. --Neil Strauss EMINEM EMINEM M&M (Marshall Mathers; music artist) : The Marshall Mathers LP More twisted than a milelong lanyard, Eminem's second album is not just a series of quick-tongued, nasty fantasies and nonchalant non·cha·lant adj. Seeming to be coolly unconcerned or indifferent. See Synonyms at cool. [French, from Old French, present participle of nonchaloir, to be unconcerned : non-, Dr. Dre tracks. It's also a hall-of-mirrors argument about words versus actions, and how crazy anyone would be to make Eminem a role model. The album raised hackles hackles the hairs over the neck and back that are elevated by arrector pili muscles in response to fright or anger. A mechanism to threaten opponents, perhaps by appearing larger. and got under listeners' skins; when Eminem runs out of ideas, he regularly reverts to homophobia. --J.P ERYKAH BADU: Mama's Gun Cool, teasing, and self-assured, Erykah Badu slinks slink calves, slinks unborn calves retrieved at the abattoir. Their meat, slink veal, is not authorized for consumption in most countries. Their skins are valuable because they are so fine and clean. through another album of supple funk vamps and glimpses about inner-city womanhood. In stripped-down music that recalls the old school Sly Stone and Marvin Gaye, she reflects on tough choices and the nuances of sensuality, always taking her time. --J.P. DEFTONES: The White Pony Powerful rock often rejects society's judgments and honors difficult emotions. New metal is all about braving moral darkness, and no album did it better in 2000 than this slick, piercing bit of philosophical violence from the multi-ethnic foursome out of Sacramento, California. --A.P. DELTRON 3030: Deltron 3030 Picking up where Kool Keith's futuristic Dr. Octagon persona and Prince Paul's rap opera left off, Deltron 3030 is the hip-hop equivalent of David Bowie's experimental 1974 rock opera Diamond Dogs, executed by the hip-hop equivalent of a power trio: a visionary producer (the Automator), a powerful rapper (Del tha Funkee Homosapien Del tha Funkee Homosapien, also known as Del the Funky Homosapien and Deltron Zero is an alternative hip hop artist. Del was born Teren Delvon Jones on August 12, 1972 in Oakland, California [1]. He currently lives in Richmond. ), and a nimble turntablist (Kid Koala). --N.S. NELLY: Country Grammar Nelly materialized out of St. Louis with the singsong sing·song n. 1. Verse characterized by mechanical regularity of rhythm and rhyme. 2. A monotonously rising and falling inflection of the voice. adj. Monotonous in vocal inflection or rhythm. choruses of Bone Thugs-N-Harmony, the dispersion beats of Timbaland, the block-party bounce of New Orleans, and a handful of childhood rhymes to come up with an album that is as much disposable pop as it is hardcore rap. The lyrics on Grammar, like Tupac's or Outkast's, humanize hu·man·ize tr.v. hu·man·ized, hu·man·iz·ing, hu·man·iz·es 1. To portray or endow with human characteristics or attributes; make human: humanized the puppets with great skill. 2. gangsta life, reveling in sex and violence one moment, then paying tribute to women and apologizing to mama the next. --N.S. PJ HARVEY: Stories From the City, Stories From the Sea Other artists must run away from home to get to something fresh. Polly Jean Harvey, rock's queen of the visceral, finds inspiration from the "city" of New York and the "sea" near her hometown of Dorset, England. She sounds like a lovestruck teenager on this soaring album, but with her skills in full force, she turns innocence into a dream as deep as any nightmare. --A.P. |
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