Grandaddy are in there (The Sophtware Slump), so I wonder if Mercury Rev will be as well.
Anyhoo, utterly pointless list, usless as a guide, only relevant in a UK/US sense.
in what way? the music represented or who it is aimed at? bear in mind it is a british newspaper, predominantly read by british people
These lists are getting incredibly boring. As the compilers of this list seem to be aware- the introduction pretty much renounces the title of the article which is exactly the "cake and eat it too crap" i'd expect from the guardian...and really there's plenty of dreadful stuff in there. Why would anyone want their cultural choices prescribed this way?
oh dear. come down off your high horse for a second please. a very significant number of people really do want their cultural choices to be guided in this way. It's why any of the writers on this board have jobs. There is nothing wrong with giving tips to readers at all, and that's all it is, just a guide, something that people will dip into and maybe grab a few things from.
whether you like it or not, plenty of readers buy and use newspapers 1) to access news 2) to provide commentary on and routes into wider culture. there's quite a lot going on out there and it's hard to keep up with all of it so a bit of help is often useful.
this all seems a bit kneejerky — "IT'S A LIST, IT'S IN A NEWSPAPER... IT'S EVIL!" most people just don't have time to hang around messageboards and read blogs all the time (luckily for them, because most blogs are pretty horrible, truth be told), so newspapers and the larger online magazines still have a valuable job to do and a vast audience to cater to. i'm all for criticising the mainstream media - hey, i think much more should be written about much more interesting stuff, all of it preferably by me — but let's have a little balance here, please.
personally, i was just pleasantly surprised by a lot of the stuff in this list so far. it's better than most of them. but i should have known better than to say so...
over "iron man" every single time.... not to digress, but out of the original wu solo joints (tical, ODB, liquid swords, cuban links, iron man),l ghost's is the weakest... it isn't til Supreme that he really finds himself...
would i put it on a list of top 1000 records? maybe... but i sure as fuck would not put Iron Man on there in some misguided attempt to score black credibiltiy points...
let's just say that we can agree to disagree about how good iron man is — i think it's the best solo record he's made and it's a big personal favourite. where does the idea of "black credibility points" come in, though? was that why dizzee, big youth and isaac hayes are in there — a cynical attempt to lure people of colour into the malignant ideological grasp of the guardian or a hollow attempt by white music critics to appear down? don't be silly. they're in there because they're actually rather good records.
Alexis Petridis never edited Hip-Hop Connection. He worked for Mixmag when Dorian Lynskey was editor, then edited Select. In fairness to the guy, working for Mixmag for a couple of years would probably make me pray for the death of dance music, too.