The article also serves as a mini-history of the Crack Rap genre.
Jay-Z
Legal Album of 2004: Cut Copy's Bright Like Neon Love, which also wins best album name of 2004, and finished strong in best album cover category. (The band wins for best band name also, but they sure made it hard to search for.) The album combined house beats with New Wave attitude, the first half is as thrilling as the first half of Daft Punk's Discovery without the latter's second half letdown. The lyrics are throwaway sentimental pap, but I'm only ever interested in lyrics that tell a story anyway. I heard about Cut Copy through an MP3 blog, and I felt compelled to post an MP3 of the band earlier this year.
Honorable Mention: Björk's Medúlla. Yes, I started listening to Björk again this year, and as she usual does, she flipped it on pretty much everybody with her almost all-voice album.
Best Independent-As-Fuck Album of 2004: Bea the Playa's The Critics Call You A Genius, though to be honest, this was the only independent-as-fuck album I bought all year. (Matt Haughey has a great list of 2004 independent-as-fuck albums to check out.) It's fun accoustic-guitar folk music with swearing and drug references, and I heard about her through Flickr, as she posted many a photo of herself, and clicking through to her profile, then to her website, then to her CD Baby site, then listen to a few tracks, then a purchase.
Best Illegal Album of 2004: David Browne beat me to it, but Jay-Z's and the Beatles' The Grey Album, produced by DJ Danger Mouse. I was late to appreciate it, but it seeped deeper into my consciousness after giving The Beatles (The White Album) a sustained and thorough listen. More than just a mashup, Danger Mouse did with a whole album what most rap producers these days do: he took something from the past, chopped it up, and made it new again. Most producers borrow liberally from one song to make a new song, took liberally from two albums to make an album entirely different than the originals. I've written that Jay-Z's original album sounds like the "remix" version to me.
Those that have bought a DJ's hiphop mix tape in the last 10 years know that DJ Danger Mouse did was not without precedent: rappers have long released voice-only versions of their songs (or, Jay-Z's case, whole albums) as well as instrumental versions so that DJs can produce "blends", that is playing the vocal track of one song over the instrumental track of another, creating a whole new experience. They were mashups before the kids called them mashups.
The Grey Album is my pick for the best album of 2004 overall, legal or illegal, indie or not.
Band of 2004: Interpol, who are evidently the American Tragically Hip. They and their sound were everywhere.
Radio Station of 2004: The Internet. I only really listened to KEXP this year, but until I got a laptop, listening to great new music via the Internet (via streaming radio stations and MP3 blogs) was a good enough reason for throwing all my CD's in the trash.
Purchased Jay-Z's Reasonable Doubt from iTunes Music Service Canada
Rightly heralded as one of the best rap albums of all-time, though my favourite song of his ("Where I'm From") is on his second album. On this album, "Bring It On" (giving a shout-out to Nas), the lyrics for which are fairly abstract (though I always liked Sauce Money's one-liner “Sling your ding-a-ling from Bed-Stuy Brooklyn to Beijing”) and gangster-movie-reference-heavy, is easily in my top-5 for beats by DJ Premier. "Dead Presidents II" is Jay-Z's first Nas sample, the second being "Rap Game / Crack Game" off In My Lifetime Vol. 1. So many references to Nas, you have to wonder why relations between the two went sour.
Justin replies to my correction: “none of it disputes the fact that the Grey Album heavily samples the Beatle's White Album without permission. I may have fumbled some of my points, but I am most interested in the real legal implications of music such as this because I like it. The more I listen to the record the more I think it is groundbreaking, but it is important not to trample upon other artists' works.”
The legal implications are being discussed at length, and rightly so: the greatest rock band in history and one of the greatest rappers in history were combined to make something that may appeal to generations that grew up on either. The legal implications have to do with copyright, but are also cultural implications. How many people are discovering The Beatles (The White Album) through the "rap version" of it, and how many people are going to think that The Grey Album was the original? I can only speak for myself, but the prospect of Jay-Z's The Black Album wasn't very compelling other than the Timbaland and Neptunes productions, but, before listening to The Grey Album, I hadn't heard any of the original beats. (Still haven't.) Most rap fans will probably have heard the original first, but not me: I'm going to hear the originals and, despite knowing intellectually that what I'm hearing is the beat Jay-Z wanted, that the "original", almost metal version of "99 Problems" that uses "Helter Skelter" as its basis, rocks so much more than its real original?? For a lot of Internet geeks, and especially Internet geeks into hiphop, The Grey Album will feel like the way Jay-Z intended the album to be, and The Black Album will seem like some lame remix project.
This site is more grey than it normally is in support of Grey Tuesday. This site does not and will not contain copies of Jay-Z and DJ Danger Mouse's Grey Album, but some other sites are hosting it today.
Kelefa Sanneh: “Compared with hip-hop heroes like these, Jay-Z has a significant handicap: he's alive and well. He is also one of the shrewdest rappers of all time and one of the most creative, so he found a clever way to overcome this liability: he decided to stage his own death, or at least disappearance.”
Elizabeth Mendez Berry: “Jay-Z's recording persona is so compelling because though he's still a caricature—certain features are disproportionately emphasized—he's an elegantly rendered one. [...] Somehow, in spite of the disposables he's picked up along the way—shiny shirts, Shaquille O'Neal collaborations, rotating cast of Roc-A-Fella sidekicks, endless product placements—Jay-Z's Teflon nonchalance seems timeless.”
Touré: “Many fans are skeptical about the retirement talk and expect Jay-Z to pull a Michael Jordan and return in a few years.” A better comparison would have been Too Short, who said on the first track of Gettin' It (Album Number Ten), “we gonna kick it like this on the last album”. 3 years later he came out with Can't Stay Away, then You Nasty, then Chase the Cat, then What's My Favorite Word?, and then Married to the Game. I fully expect Jay-Z to "return" to the rap game, even though I don't think he's going to stray too far.
Sasha Frere-Jones: “Before you start thinking Jay-Z has been sipping too much Armadale at the 40/40, producer Timbaland does what he does best: save the day with pure crunktion. (Yes, it's a word. No, you can't look it up.) "Dirt Off Your Shoulder" is a thunderous track that recalls the weird élan of Timbaland and Jay-Z's last big hit together, "Big Pimpin'." It is likely you will see people who should know better dancing to this song and brushing invisible dirt off their shoulders. Be kind—they will have no choice.”
