Missed this at the time, as a part-time lurker. Great read & very entertaining mix, Benjy (as agreed elsewhere btw, I've started playing back some of yr excellent mixes on my radio show & will definitely use this one!). I'm ashamed to say that as someone who ducks in & out of different styles of music, there were even a small handful of tunes in the top 30 that I was only dimly aware of, if at all! Here are my own top picks, from my end of the noughties general top 100, off my blog. I am surprised looking back how few UKG etc tunes there are in there, but then I did spend most of the decade in Blackpool, where other styles rool. Plenty of familiar titles in here...I was sorta surprised looking back that I didn't put any Ghost stuff in, as I was nigh-on obssessed with that stuff at the time, but i guess it was the overall sound I loved rather than any specific tune...
18) DJ Mujava - “Township Funk” (I know its not really meant to be in here, but it feels like it should be)
17) Darkstar “Need You” (rare occurence of really good modern vocoder record)
16) Apple “Mr Bean” (the second-to-last record that took me several plays to understand)
15) Rustie “Zig-Zag” (the last record that it took me several plays to understand)
14) Bloodclaat Gangsta Youth “Kill Or Be Killed” (I'm gonna put this in cos I don't think I put in any drum n bass - which is obviously nuumy - this was the closest I came...also, I know there was a thread on here eulogising it)
13) Mordant Music “24 Million Or Sell Neverland” (probably wouldn't get in my list now, but like the Shackleton one, it reached out of its musical backwater & came to represent a massive news story for me)
12) The Streets “It’s Too late” [live version off Radio 1 from the time] (The record that should have had the success that “Dry Your Eyes Mate” got. Gets extra points for always reminding me of “Sitting In the Park”, which is in my all-time top ten)
11) Skream “Midnight Request Line”
10) The Streets - Get Out of My House [MC Version] (feels so weird putting two Streets tunes in as I wasn't a major fan, but this is barely him anyway)
9) Musical Mob “Pulse X” (particularly the two-bass-notes-&-nothing-else-version [I THINK its is a version of this!] thats on some ancient NASTY recording I eventually got a few years back. The B of the Bang for grime)
8) Wiley “Goin’ Mad” (I know many other tracks by him are technically better raps, but I like tracks about madness as a lot of my close friends have mental health issues & I think he had quite an interesting take on it with the strange thinking-out-loud self-motivation talk in the middle etc!)
7) Wiley “They Just Can’t Get Along With Wiley” (or whatever it is called - if I knew, I might actually buy a copy! Modern music distribution...weird)
6) Shackleton “Blood On My Hands [Original Mix]” (I got roasted by various friends at the time for totally dismissing the remix in favour of this, but I stand by that)
5) Wiley “Ice Rink” (the first devil mix I heard)
4) DPM feat Shizzle, Napper & Bruza “Have Some of That” (grimepunk music hall!)
3) More Fire Crew – Oi! (which I compared to Rotterdam Termination Source’s “Poing” as a brutal musical reboot)
2) Dizzee Rascal “I Luv U” (gabba garage!)
1) Wiley – Wot Do U Call It? (I think its the Reynolds Deluxe Nuumisms that brought it to the top)
