Fried to fricassee, pepperseed to Pepperdine: Screw Rock 'n' Roll Top 69 Singles of 2006, Nos. 61-65

One thing I forgot to mention yesterday: I've purposefully not considered a few songs that were released/leaked right at the end of the year such as the new Fall Out boy, Shins or Arcade Fire singles. Firstly, I'm not sure if any of those were officially released in '06, or just given to Radio/leaked to the Internet. Secondly, those songs just feel like '07 songs. And thirdly, it's my list and I can do whatever the hell I want with it. Onward.

65. Kelis ft. Too $hort - Bossy

Not too much to choose between this and the Too $hort track, but I put this one higher, because it's got Kelis on it. It's just logical. Also, it has that slow-motion melody that toys with your mind, carefully plucked strings encircling you for the pure fun of it. I still haven't listened to Kelis Was Here, and when I listen to "Bossy" I sort of don't want to. The album's been almost universally declared a disappointment, and so if this is my only memory of Kelis '06, I can maintain my perception of her being on top of the world and completely unassailable.

Post script: Don't even talk to me about that Alan Braxe and Fred Falke remix. I've liked other stuff those guys have done, but their "Bossy" remix is just plain dull.

64. Beyoncé - Irreplaceable

I don't know how y'all in the northern hemisphere related to this track. Its airy acoustic guitars make this the perfect summer song, but Beyoncé, for some reason, chose to give it to you while you're all shivering through the winter months. I hope the light, carefree strum is warming you up a bit, but I'm still sure this sounds nowhere near as good as it does floating over our summer days.

The thing is, the first time I would have heard this track was back when B'Day was released, in our winter months, but I have absoluely no memory of it from then. The song is stuck right at the end of the album in a run of slow ballads, and until I heard "Irreplaceable" on the radio, I didn't even know it existed. Maybe that's a good thing, though; I was blown away by "Déjà Vu" and "Ring the Alarm" the first time I heard them, but the initial impact of those tracks quickly dissipated after a few listens. "Irreplaceable," though, like the best Beyoncé/Destiny's Child tracks, keeps on sounding good months after it first showed up. It's obviously not "Crazy in Love" or "Jumpin' Jumpin'" or anything, but it has the same durability those tracks had.

And if Ne-Yo ever gets sick of R&B, he really should look at a career writing country music. He fills his songs - he's a co-writer, here - with the same clever wordplay and catchy ideas that the best country writers use so effectively. "To the left, everything you own in the box to the left," and "I could have another you in a minute/matter of fact, he'll be here in a minute" are the sort of witty lyricisms you could take to Nashville. Same goes for the entirety of "So Sick" and "When You're Mad." Not to mention that the guy always does his best work when writing for other people. I don't know why it is, but Ne-Yo's solo tracks never sound as good as they look on paper.

63. Jim Jones - Reppin' Time

"Can't leave rap alone, the game needs me." Only, wait, that was Jay-Z who said it, and, as it turned out, the game didn't actually need him. No disrespect to Hova, you know, but it wasn't really necessary for him to come out of retirement like that, and when he did, nothing much changed. The game without Jay-Z was now just the same as the game with Jay-Z.

"Can't leave rap alone, the game needs me." Yeah, Eminem said it, too. But when Eminem finally went on hiatus, it was a relief, not a disappointment. And when he came back with The Re-up, even though his contribution to the album/mixtape/whatever was on the minimal side, he wasn't welcomed back. In fact, I kinda hoped he would have stayed away longer.

No, sometimes the things we need are far more base than the fine delights of Eminem or Jay-Z. I like Champagne, but I need water. I like steak and sushi and fancy-ass fish and whatever, but I need bread. We may like Shady and Jigga, but what the game really needs is Dipset: moronic, triumphant, straight up ignorant rhymes over larger-than-life beats. And in 2006 we were struggling for our Byrd Gang fix. Killa Season had disappointed even Dipset stans (yeah, that's what I am, I'll admit it). Juelz Santana seemed to have disappeared off the face of the earth. 40 Cal... wait, shit, 40 Cal? What am I thinking? But into the breach stepped Jimmy Jones, and with an adlib and a jump shot, he gave us relief and the NY Giants defense a celebration.

The problem with "We Fly High," though, was that it didn't sound like a Diplomats track. It was too workmanlike, the hook was too everyday, and the most interesting thing Jones said in the entire song was "BALLIN!" It was more like a junior league G-Unit track. "Reppin' Time," on the other hand, sounded like the anthemic dumb-shit manna the Dips made their name on. It starts with a screwed up sample of Cam at his best ("Get 'Em Girls") and rapidly grows into a beat worthy of a Capo. Jones is ridiculous on it, of course. He spends the first minute ad-libbing, then he tries to spend the rest of the song saying "BALLIN'!" as many times as he can. The adlibs are probably better than the rhymes, though the lyrics are irrelevent. The entire point is to marvel at Jones' style; he approaches rapping like Godzilla approaches Tokyo. If he had got Cam and Juelz to put a guest verse on, it could have been a classic along the lines of "Crunk Muzik," but even as a mindless banger it turned out nice enough.

62. Justin Timberlake ft. Timbaland - SexyBack

You know whats really weird? The song's been out for about six months, the album was one of my favorites from '06, but I'm still not even sure if I like "SexyBack." I do enjoy listening to it, so I guess that means I do like it, but I don't have the reaction to this song that I do to other tracks I like. I think that it isn't even that the song is particularly pleasing to listen to in the conventional way; rather it's fascinating for just how weird it is. I can get behind "My Love," for instance, wholeheartedly as a great pop tune, but "SexyBack" is so unyieldingly bizarre and uncompromising that I remain completely fascinated and befuddled by it. I feel like I never quite get a handle on it, like there's always part of it that I haven't fully understood, and that's what keeps me coming back.

61. Band of Horses - The Funeral

The good thing about putting up this list in February is that I got to see all the other singles lists and catch up on tracks I missed the first time round. I was kind of down with Band of Horses all year, in a "they're neat, I should listen to more of their stuff" kind of way, but I only started bumping "The Funeral" once I saw it in Pitchfork's list.

So, late to the party maybe, but still, I'm glad I found this. It's so sad and pretty and does all the indie rock sort of things indie rock songs should do, like churn, growl and wail, all at, in this case, epic scale.

(I was looking for the funeral from Guns 'n' Roses "November Rain" video for the picture up there, but I couldn't find a decent shot. Shame.)

16 albums with me on the front: Screw Rock 'n' Roll Top 69 Singles of 2006, Nos. 66-69

I love lists. Music lists, I mean. My favorite musical time of the year is the fourth quarter when lists start going up everywhere, when I get to select my favorite songs and albums of the year, talk about the best and worst players, and look back at the movements and stories that distinguished the previous 12 months. Sure, I'm placing heirarchy onto a system that is fundamentally incompatable with the entire concept of the heirarchy, but what does that matter? It's not gospel, it's just a list.

My favorite lists are single lists, because I hear so many songs in a year that those are the lists I can make most diverse, most well rounded and most reflective of the music I listened to that year. I'm not bothering going through my favorite albums here because my favorite albums have been picked and pored over so thoroughly, by myself and others, that it seems pointless for me to add my extra couple of pennies. Writing about songs, on the other hand, lets me talk about the music that really did it for me in 2006, no matter where or how it cropped up.

There isn't much suspense going on here. My Top 10 is exactly the same as the one I submitted for Pazz and Jop and for Jackin' Pop, and my Top 20 is, but for a few small changes right at the end, exactly the same as the list I submitted to Stylus' Top Singles feature last November. I'm doing this so I can write about these songs, not so I can hold a thrilling countdown.

The list is 69 items long because I painstakingly put together a lengthy, ranked list, and then looked for the point that I started seeing songs I wanted to talk about. If you're curious, #70 was Thom Yorke's "Harrowdown Hill," which I like though I have little to say about it, and #71 was "Want You" by Lloyd and Lil' Wayne. I didn't want to write about that, either, because this list will have enough writing about Weezy as it is. #72 was "Move Along" by the All American Rejects. And so on.

Today I'm putting up Nos. 66-69, and then I'll do five a day until I get to number one. I'll try to include mp3s, but I'm not going to upload all 69, so you'll see some YouTube links too, especially for the more popular tracks. If you don't have an mp3 of "SexyBack" by now it's probably because you don't like the song.

And if you find yourself wondering why I've waited until February to post my top singles of last year... well, the classy thing to do would be not to call attention to it.

69. Cassie - Me & You

I wasn't real positive about this track back when we first got it at the Jukebox. I thought it sounded like a dull retread of Teairra Mari's "Make Her Feel Good," which was a song that I quite liked on first listen, but one that I didn't find myself wanting to hear a great deal subsequently. "Me & You" sounded like it had even less going for it than the Mari track; it's so empty and featureless that I figured once I'd mailed off my Jukebox review I'd never think about it again. But that eerie keyboard line, at once aloof and distancing yet as intimate and inviting as the title suggests it should be, wouldn't leave my mind. Apparently it stuck around in a lot of other people's heads, too, because I gradually started hearing this track pop up everywhere. I'd go to work and it would be playing over the PA; I'd turn on the TV and Cassie would be lip-synching into a mirror, doing that oddly fascinating dance in her cute little pumps; I'd be looking at Stylus' Top 50 Singles of 2006 list, and there it would be in the top 20. So, without me even really consciously choosing to listen to the song, I'd rather fallen in love with it. Or I'd at least developed a fondness for checking it out as I passed it in the halls. It really is a very shapely, attractive, well put together song. It has Cassie's voice pushed way too far up in the mix, so it's overpoweringly close to you and it has those menacing sawtooth basslines cropping up just as the tinkling melody has started to wind itself around your person like the lines pleasing smells make in cartoons. It's an intoxicating track, and one that I was completely unprepared for. And I think if the song was a person it would look exactly as Cassie does in the video.

68. Cold War Kids - We Used to Vacation

Hot indie rock singles were in short supply in 2006, but there was no shortage of disappointing, overhyped albums. The Cold War Kids provided one of each, so I can't hate them entirely. "We Used to Vacation" may have been the best moment on an album with disappointingly few highlights, but as highlights go, it's pretty great. Pounding piano chords, off-kilter rhythm, and a nice breakdown for the chorus, all topped off with some semi-soused, sorrowful lyrics and a burning-hot guitar solo at the end, keeping the whole show going while the rest of the band disintegrates the song into noise behind it. It's all enough to make me forget I'm listening to a Christian PSA about the dangers of alcoholism.

67. Too $hort - Blow the Whistle

The hyphy movement gave Oakland veterans like Too $hort a modest revival of fortune, and it didn't have the air of charity Nas' "Where Are They Now" remixes did. Short makes the most of the moment, of course. None of this awkward grown man shit like Jay-Z gave us, just straight up celebration. And what's he celebrating? The denigration of women of course! Actually, that's not quite true: on "Blow The Whistle," Too $hort practically removes any meaning or context the word "bitch" may have had, turning it into a definition-free, yelped syllable of pure sound. He relishes every opportunity he gets to say it, beginning with a delicious plosive and then drawing the ending out for as long as possible. He toasts Dave Chappelle, gives an approving nod to Northern California's new generation and, in general, has a delirious, utterly meaningless blast. What's his favorite word?

Special mention, too, to Lil' Jon, who produced this. Not only is the whistle-blowing a great, simple hook that hearks back to the heady days of '03 when his productions were all over the radio, the track is a great banger that sounds nothing like "Salt Shaker," "Yeah," or "Get Low." it's good to know that Jon's had a second, albeit more anonymous, lease on life.

66. Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Gold Lion

Show Your Bones was a rather underrated album, a curiously brittle affair, the charms of which were slow to surface. After the brief Internet excitement when this track leaked, the YYYs pretty much fell off everyone's radar. "Gold Lion" was probably an awkward choice for first single; though the not-that-great Diplo remix got everyone talking, when it became apparent that the song was neither a romantic swoon like "Maps" or a fiery Karen O screed, disappointment started to set in. Well it did for me, anyway, and I think a lot of people felt the same way. I only really came back to "Gold Lion" after "Cheated Hearts" and "Dudley" had won me back, and I'd started listening to the sad, desolate second half of Bones. The thrills of "Gold Lion" were perhaps more modest than what we'd come to expect from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, but there's something going for its acoustic stomp and wordless, hollered hook, and the way the track sounds low-key and overexcited all at once.

I'm Manning up like Eli Peyton

Screw Rock 'n' Roll isn't a sports blog, and there's a good reason for that. Basically the only sport I watch is football, and I don't pretend to be any kind of expert on that. I cannot overstate the serverity of my lack of football knowledge. I am probably the least knowledgeable football fan of all time. My excuse for that is I only developed any interest at all when I was in the States back in '04-'05, and so most of my football watching life, I haven't lived in the one country that plays that sport.

But even though I don't know anything about football, I do know what I like. I'm a Seahawks fan, and I hold a grudge — you wouldn't believe the schadenfreude I got from Pittsburgh's woeful season this year — and for that reason I'm looking for the demolition of those Seahawk-defeating Bears to go down next Sunday. (Which is actually Monday here in Australia, whatever.) That's right, for one day only I'm going for Peyton to get his ring. Or Tony Dungy to get his, at least. Peyton... I basically figure that if he deserved a ring he would have got it by now.

So, I ain't some sports guy, but I do know music, and so when music gets involved with sports I can almost come up with an opinion worth having. Hip hop is especially good at getting involved in sports, partly because a lot of rappers are into sports, partly because rap and sports both have a strong competitive streak and emphasize the display of finely honed skill, and partly because rap is one of the few forms of music with a rapid enough response rate, in terms of both creation and distribution, to keep up with the week-to-week schedule of professional sports.

When the Houston Astros made the World Series in 2005, it was the same year Houston was blowing up as a rap city, and in a nice piee of synergy Paul Wall and (I think) Chamillionaire both put together Astros-cheering tracks to celebrate the team's forthcoming victory (a victory which didn't actually happen). Earlier in 2005, Mr. Lif, Akrobatik and Fakts One released a track called "The Razor" as a tribute to the Patriots team that would go on to win the Superbowl, and, for the Superbowl last year, I found a bunch of tracks by some Seattle rappers no one's ever heard of celebrating the Seahawks' Superbowl appearance. None of this was great music per se, but that didn't really matter, because it was music with a built-in expiry date, and it only needed to last until the big game was over.

And though the occasional non-rap artists will get in on the act, as the Dropkick Murphys did for the Red Sox with "Tessie" the year they won the World Series, most rock acts and the like just can't get the music written, recorded and out there quick enough. Incidentally, the Red Sox World Series victory is the only one I've ever really cared about, mostly because when it all happened I'd just arrived in America and I was experiencing the mystifying but exhilarating experience of writing for the Western Front and seeing half the staff crowded around a little TV in the editor's office and going absolutely crazy about something I could barely understand. It was a rather memorable introduction to the sport.

So my music-loving, sports-ignorant brain will inevitably make the musical talent of the city involved a factor when it comes to deciding which teams I want to see make the chamionship game of whichever sport is in question. It's only a small part, and true, Seattle teams always trump this consideration unquestionably (which is fortunate, because much as I love Seatown, a strong, thriving rap scene isn't uppermost on its list of attributes). So, with this in mind, let's have a look at the musical possibilities offered by the various cities with pro sports teams.

New Orleans Saints
Once the Seahawks had lost, I was with the Saints all the way, for about a million reasons. There was Reggie Bush, Drew Breez, their entertaining football, and yes, that coming back after Katrina thing. But the big downside to this Saints-less Superbowl is that if any city had the talent and drive to come up with a decent Superbowl anthem, it was NOLA. Mainly this is down to Lil' Wayne. Weezy would not only be capable of putting together a decent song for the Saints, but I think had they made it to the Superbowl, he quite likely would have done it. Weezy tells us on Dedication #2 that he's a sports fan, and that he has a favorite player and a favorite team in every sport, and he uses football references in his raps ("quarterback, well protected from the Warren Sapp"), so I'm pretty certain he's not disinterested in what's going on, unlike, say, GZA, who says he isn't a sports person, and doesn't follow football. I don't know if Wayne is a Saints dude, but he sure has that hometown pride. Not to mention Weezy's absurd prolificity. It'd be no problem for him to have stuck something together had the Saints gone to the Superbowl. We're missing out.

Chicago Bears/Indianapolis Colts
I haven't heard any tracks out supporting either team, which doesn't surprise me much. Indianapolis, if it does have a rap scene, is hardly renowned for it's surfeit of talent. Rhymefest has a connection to the city, but he seems to rep Chicago these days, so I'm not sure where his allegiance lies. He actually could probably come out with something half-decent, since he's that sort of hard scrabble rapper who would put together something sufficiently anthemic to get the fans going, and also with enough OK lines that it's not completely forgettable. I couldn't see Kanye or Common doing anything though. Common's too busy hawking Gap sweatshirts these days, and it doesn't seem his style. And much as I love Kanye, I couldn't see him coming up with anything this quick. Dude has good songs and some good lines, but his success seems to come from dedication and plenty of time spent fine-tuning his lyrics. If Kanye tosses something off, you know it's not going to be any good. West is an albums dude, not a mixtapes and freestyles dude. As for Lupe Fiasco, he'd rather be off rapping about robots or something. Doesn't strike me as a football fan.

The main hope for Chicago is R. Kelly. He strikes me as the kind of guy who could be into sports, he's not shy about repping the 312, and the more off the wall his subject matter, the better the song (see "Trapped in the Closet"). Of course, were Kells to do this, he'd find some way to turn football into a metaphor for fucking, but, please, is there anything wrong with that? Come on Robert. You've still got a couple days before the game starts. Get to the studio, and do more for the Bears than Rex Grossman's done for them all season.

(Of course, the Bears still have that Superbowl Shuffle thing that they did whenever they were in the Superbowl last, so maybe the creative urge in Chi-town isn't that strong given they already have a de facto anthem.) But, if anyone out there has heard any fan-tracks, send them along to me, I'd like to hear them.

UPDATE: So Kanye and Common got together to do Southside Superbowl (MP3 courtesy of Spine Magazine), and it's actually pretty good. I don't mind being proven wrong by artists who exceed my expectations. Kudos to Messrs West and Lynn. And someone get R. Kelly moving. There's still time. Don't disappoint me, Kells.

New York Giants/Jets
Despite New York's strong rap credentials, I can't really think of any current guys who could come up with anything decent for these teams were they to make a championship. Dipset don't mind telling you how awesome New York is, but in their mind, it's more awesome for being the hometown of the Diplomats than for any other reason. To write a good team song, you need to be able to think something other than yourself deserves kudos, and I don't think any of the Diplomats are capable of doing that. Cam'ron is the most talented rapper, but he's at his least interesting when he has to make an actually point about something. He's best when he's careening all over the place flinging his onomatapaeia and wild syllables, and occasionally returning to coke dealing as a reference point to stop the whole thing flying off the face of the earth. Killa Cam could never write a decent football rap just like he never comes up with dis tracks half as good as they should be: make him focus and you lose everything enjoyable about his flow. And while you may point out that the Dips already have contributed "We Fly High" to the Giants, but, it's telling that the song wasn't a football track until the Giants made it so. That the Giants had to get their football anthem from a track in which the main sports reference is to basketball shows the paucity of potential here.

Elsewhere, G-Unit wouldn't drag themselves out of the gloom long enough to record anything that light-hearted, and most of the rest of the young New York guys have too much of a sense of entitlement. Where Paul Wall loves Texas enough to write a song about a hometown team, he's diffident enough to shine the spotlight on some other guys. I can't see Papoose or Saigon doing that.

The older dudes probably wouldn't come up with much either. Nas is too crotchety and introverted these days, and Jay-Z would only do something for the Nets. Or NASCAR. Besides, he said on Monday Night Football that he's a Cowboys supporter. Ghostface probably could come up with something, but no one would pay any attention to it. There are probably a million unknowns around who would give it a go, but if the Giants or the Jets make it to the Superbowl next year, I'm predicting a poor silence from the city's big name rappers. Weirdly enough, I'd have to think Fat Joe would make the best effort, given the opportunity. Especially if he had Taking Back Sunday giving him a hand. Edit: after further contemplation, I could see Nas doing a fair job of this sort of thing, and spending the entire track time shouting out players from the '80s and '90s. Sort of a "Where Are They Now? (NFL remix)" type thing.

Atlanta Falcons
Atlanta should be capable of putting out a good pro-Falcons track. Atlanta rappers love Atlanta, they're always mentioning the Falcons, and if Michael Vick ever gets it together, we should be in for quite the banging Superbowl. Let's not let ourselves get too excited, though. Young "Dirty birds, nigga, we play with them Falcons" Jeezy likes dropping Vick's name, but let's face it, if Jeezy tried to write a song about football, it'd just end up being about drugs. Though with the hidden-compartment-in-the-water-bottle thing, that could not be too bad an idea. T.I.'s given me the impression lately that he can do anything, so I'd have to at least give him a chance in this department. But the best guy from the A to do this would have to be Ludacris. He's got punchlines all over the place, he's playful enough to want to do it, and he'd just half-ass it, which is fantastic, because Luda is at his worst when he's using his whole ass. Of course, I could also see Lil' Jon doing something, too, and it would turn out to be brilliant and ridiculous in approximately equal amounts.

Philadelphia Eagles
Philly has enough good rappers for one of them to do a good football track, and maybe one of them did back in '05. Since it was my first American Superbowl and I wasn't really big on the game at the time anyway, whether anyone from Philly had put a "Go Team" track together was the last thing on my mind. But I couldn't have imagined Black Thought could come up with anything; he's not that interesting a rapper, and he'd have to wait too long for ?uestlove to OK the project. (I assume ?uestlove keeps tight control over the rest of the Roots, kind of like the Wicked Witch of the West with her flying monkeys.) Peedi Crakk or Freeway would put up a good show, but the real winner here would be Beanie Sigel. Hard scrabble enough to come up with a good football rap and sufficiently used to playing second-fiddle that he wouldn't mind making a bunch of other guys the star of his song.

Houston Texans
As I said before, H-Town rappers have proved they can do good sports songs. But the Texans in the Superbowl?

Miami Dolphins
You just know Rick Ross would want to do this, and you also know it would suck, because Ross is barely competent when writing about his favorite topic, let alone something out of his comfort zone. Trick Daddy or Pitbull could do something decent, but the real Miami potential is if DJ Khaled got as many hometown rappers as he could find together in the studio and let them go from there. I once read a Trick Daddy interview where he promised to kill anyone who comes round Miami talking the Dolphins down, so there's the beginning, just fill in the gaps.

West Coast
Best shot is if the Raiders or the '9ers ever get some strength (let's hope it's not the 49ers). The bay has a thriving scene with huge regional pride and a thing for jumping on memes. If the Raiders looked good, expect players going dumb, E-40 coining about a million new football terms and hyphy adding football to ghostriding, turf dancing, thizz and sydeshows as local cultural reference points.

Farther south, I bet the lack of an L.A. team to rep is killing the Game. You can be pretty confident that if there was a Los Angeles team and it made the Superbowl, he'd do something like 690 bars in their honor. Doesn't Snoop have a Lakers connection, though? Maybe L.A. can get some sports rap that way. And the only band I can think of from San Diego is Blink-182. I'm not seeing a reunion-to-do-a-Chargers track scenario, I'm afraid.

The rest...?
This is the kind of inconsequential shit Nelly would be great at, but I'm not looking for any ascent of the Rams any time soon. Anyway, didn't Nelly already have his football moment with that "Get your eagle on" ish? Or am I imagining a Philly connection there?

Three 6 Mafia could do a football track, but it would just be on some straight up violence shit, i.e. fantastic. I don't know how big the Titans are in Memphis though, considering they play out of Nashville. And I wouldn't put it past Baltimore to do something if the Ravens make it, but I still don't really have a handle on the Bmore Club/rap thing, so my speculation on this point is pretty useless. And the Vikings? I don't need to hear Atmosphere rapping about football.

And my tip? Well, remember that I'm the last person you should listen to on this subject, but:

Colts.

I need to give a score, too? OK, uh... 24-17. Take it to the bank.