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Primal Scream Exterminator
The album of the year? Forget about it. The first four songs on Exterminator might hold up as the most exciting 21 minutes of music of the next thousand years. The former Prophet of the Chemical Generation talked radical politics on the title track and "Swastika Eyes", but it was the music that was truly incendiary - a remarkable heavymetalfreejazzkrautrock conflagration that blazed and smoldered in all the right places. The 500-degree blast of "Accelerator", the towering inferno of "MBV Arkestra", the charred remains of hope on "Shoot Speed Kill Light"… all this and a war on VWLS too. Fourteen years on from "Velocity Girl", 10 years after "Loaded", Primal Scream are still keepers of the flame.
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2
 Aimee Mann Bachelor No. 2
She finally got noticed for her work on the Magnolia soundtrack, but, fine as those songs were, Ms. Mann saved her best material for this self-released masterpiece of sophisticated songwriting. Anti-anthem "Fall of the World's Own Optimist" featured a co-writing credit for one E. Costello, but Mann out-Elvises Declan all over this record, weaving her biting commentaries on love, life in the music biz and growing up too late through the kind of rich and coherent song suite that comes along only once in a long while. Throw in a full, soulful production and a baker's dozen of the best melodies that Mann has ever written and you've got something approaching a classic album. Major labels, eat your heart out.
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3
 Common Like Water For Chocolate
"A complex man" indeed. Common doesn't make it easy on us - poisoning the chalice of positivity with homophobic nonsense, peppering his freaky, fascinating flow with moments of tongue-tied rhyme ineptitude. Whether it's intentional or not is beside the point - his warts-n-all presentation has made the former Common Sense the most compelling figure in hip-hop today. Like Water For Chocolate is a journey into his world: battle rhymes ("Heat", "Dooinit", "The Questions"), love stories (underdog smash of the year "The Light"), journal entries ("Time Travelin'") and social histories ("Song For Assata") paint a portrait of the artist that you'll revisit time and again.
?uestlove may have envisioned LWFC as his Solquarians Jazz Oddysey, but it was Common's personal vision that made it a modern hip-hop classic.
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4
 Outkast Stankonia
Ha ha! The funky engine that could. Many who climbed aboard the Stankonia Express still haven't found their way back. Outkast have long kept residence in the Land of Imaginary Funk, but with Stankonia, they said goodbye to the real world entirely. Big cars, foul smells, and, lest we forget, Good Hair - these are the things that mattered in Dre and Big Boi's 21st-century Electric Ladyland. By reconfiguring jungle (on single of the year "B.O.B.") and warped techno (on squealing future ragga assault "Snappin' and Trappin'") to their own ends, they took hip-hop back to the future Bambaata once embraced. And there was some wisdom to be found in their 85-in-a-55-zone raps, even if they loved to smear it with a thick coat of nasty chicken grease.
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5
 Reflection Eternal Train of Thought
Disciple of Common Sense and sometime partner to Mos Def, Talib Kweli took his turn in the spotlight with this sprawling 70-minute statement of intent. More than just a vehicle for his wordy, impassioned rhymes, however, Reflection Eternal turned out to be a fearsome partnership, with DJ Hi-Tek laying down imaginative tracks that perfectly complemented Kwa's alternately fierce and thoughtful lyricism. With both protagonists still awaiting their 25th birthdays, Train of Thought just might be the sound of credible hip-hop for years to come.
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6
 D'Angelo Voodoo
The sound of funk happening. Richly organic but more locked on than a 10-hour loop, this album not only managed to follow Brown Sugar, it made that sterling debut sound like a warm-up set. "Devil's Pie", "Chicken Grease" and "Left & Right" are determined, badass, and sexy, the way funk music used to sound before it got put under glass by a decade of over-reverent sampling. Likewise, when D turns his Voodoo to classic soul ("Send It On", "Untitled"), it's like waking up to find that R. Kelly was just a bad dream and Prince is co-writing a new album with Smokey Robinson. And god-damn, somebody put a shirt on a brotha before the women start breakin' shit up in here.
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7
 Jill Scott Who Is Jill Scott?
What D'Angelo did to our bodies, Jill Scott did to our minds. A poet without a hint of pretense, Scott also unveiled the sweetest voice we heard all year. Hers was the seduction of understanding, so she never over-sang, and we fell for her words. Maturity, strength, wisdom…they never sounded so sexy as they do on "Show Me" and "Try". After classics from D'Angelo and Common, Who Is…? completed a Soulquarian hat trick (even if ?uestlove here takes a backseat to producer Jazzy Jeff). But like those albums, Who Is…? is less about ensemble playing and production than it is about the vision of a true star.
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8
 Radiohead Kid A
What's all the fuss about then? It's just a new album from another group of boys with guitars, right? Well, not exactly. For one thing, Radiohead stopped being just another group when OK Computer set the decade on its ear. For another, they didn't even bring their guitars. Or their verses and choruses. But whatdya know? They made a cool record anyway. For all the talk about abstract techno and Miles Davis, Kid A is personal, intense, and melodic - all the things we always said we loved them for. With extra jazz and techno bits, of course.
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9
 Yo La Tengo And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside Out
Can good things come from New Jersey? More than a dozen releases and 13 years of recording from Yo La Tengo suggest that the answer is yes. Throughout their career, Yo La Tengo have consistently stretched and distorted their pop songs into naked and beautiful streams of music. With ATNTIIO, the tightly knit Hoboken trio expose relationships for the struggles and trivialities on which they stand, all sung with the sweetest and most understated vocals ever to float through your speakers. Husband and wife Ira Kaplan and Georgia Hubley, along with James McNew, churn, sweep, and pull at their instruments to create a glowing, pulsing bubble of sound. Covering the George MacRae hit "You Can Have It All", they even make disco ethereal.
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10
 Badly Drawn Boy The Hour of the Bewilderbeast
Our Boy sure has grown up. Seems like just yesterday that Damon Gough was known mostly for a set of idiosyncratic lo-fi singles and a nice line in unprofessional (some said unwatchable) live performances. Then came The Hour of the Bewilderbeast, and the realization that this kid was a big-time songwriter. A year full of press hype and Gap ads followed, topped by the bestowing of Britain's top award, the Mercury Music Prize, on young Damon's debut. If the arrangements and production on Bewilderbeast were more sophisticated than most expected, it retained the playful spirit that always made BDB more interesting than your average trad folkie (try listening to "This Song" in headphones for proof).
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Bible Music! Electric Revival! Holy shit. No idea what that was, but I think it had something to do with a million elephants and silverback orangutans. Live jungle drums, gangsta posturing, money management, pimpadelica, jump-up Hendrix ... "Bombs Over Baghdad" was quite simply the most exciting single released this year, the song most likely to elicit a frantic email from a friend with an MP3 attached. "Wait till you hear this!" the subject line read. Well, we've heard it, and we're still not sure we believe it. 