Paris - Pistol Politics (2015)

Having spent the last six months backtracking through the work of Paris one disc at a time, I've noticed both the complete absence of duds, and the fact that he's grown angrier and somehow more formidable with age. Pistol Politics is the one before the most recent album, 2020's blistering Safe Space Invader, and if it represents the lad stepping down to the release of a new one every five years - the first since 2008's Acid Reflex - it's the only aspect that's been stepped down; and this is a fucking double CD, would you believe? Never mind just rap music, you can count the number of double CDs that haven't been a complete waste of time on the testicles of one scrotal sack, and yet Pistol Politics remains fully caffeinated right to end of track twenty-seven on the second disc with not a moment wasted.

As you may be aware, Paris is a black man with things to say, and things you should probably hear regardless. You may recall certain rappers banging on about their music being edumacational back in the day, usually meaning endless bland repetition of the knowledge-wisdom-understanding mantra without truly saying anything, but Paris delivers on that ideal. You learn stuff from listening to his work. Facts I've picked up from this one, for example, being that America leads the world in just three respects - incarceration of its own people, defence spending, and grown folks who believe angels are real. There's a lot of truth that hurts here, but there's something liberating about even the shittiest news imparted in such terms.

I vaguely recall Paris once casually dismissed as also ran by one of those hairdresser magazines - Vibe, or whichever one it was - presumably meaning he'd failed to go platinum through a major label, with some half-assed analysis suggesting listeners were unable to square the hardline Black Panther politics with fat-ass street level g-funk. Of course, it depends what you call success, and never mind that he seems to have done just fine releasing artistically uncompromised material through his own label, the message delivered as funky as fuck populism being exactly why it works. It's street level communication rather than an academic treatise delivered as slogans. It's so street level that E40, the Eastsidaz and Westside Connection's WC guest on a couple of numbers proving that the common ground is a lot more expansive than purists may have realised; and sonically it spans pretty much the gamut of black music, additionally serving as a reminder of who came up with most of it - rock, blues, hip-hop, jazz, soul, p-funk, weirdy electronics, boom bap, often all jammed together on the same track, and even with a few cuts which wouldn't seem out of place on a Bill Withers album. Imagine a Public Enemy record you could slap on at a party without everyone pulling faces, or Tupac actually having done the stuff for which he's routinely credited.

As I write this, it's MLK Day here in Americaland, and somehow also the day of the presidential inauguration of the selfless multimillionaire who wants only to make America great again, even though he apparently couldn't fucking manage it first time; but listening to Paris helps, because truth is always louder and more enduring than bullshit.

Canibus - Can-I-Bus (1998)

I was about to muse upon how Canibus appeared to have vanished in the wake of the first two, when a moment's online research reveals that actually he released about a million albums since this debut and seems to have done well for himself, even if it turns out I've been facing the wrong direction all of this time. Anyway, I recall that this one didn't do so well as everyone had hoped, given the lad's brief tenure as the next big thing; and he spent at least some of the follow up blaming Wyclef for fucking up the production on the first, echoing what had been said in a few of the reviews, which probably contributed to my giving it a miss. Plus Canibus seemed like a bit of a dick, at least in interview, banging on about flying saucers, freemasons and other conspiracies, qualifying this obsession by proposing that sceptics were uneducated fools who enjoyed being blind to the truth of the true facts, and so on and so forth.

Also, naming yourself after the ganja…

So once again, here I am two decades after the fact thinking, how bad could it have been?

Well, Channel Zero, in which our man explains about lost civilisations, aliens and stuff, is frankly fucking stupid, although one can't help but admire the lyrical dexterity by which he attaches this particular kick me sign to his own ass; but apart from that, Can-I-Bus is not at all what I expected. I was aware of his being a pretty decent lyricist - formidable even - and his name turns up in a few of those all-time top fifty listings. On the strength of this set, I'd say he could be top ten, not least if either Tupac or Eminem made it into any of the aforementioned listings - which I'm sure they did seeing as how they usually do. He's mostly a battle rapper, and it shows on this album, which would have been a bit monothematic except you're too busy tripping over the wordplay to notice; and extra points for the massively satisfying LL Cool J takedown. As the man says:

More lines than the bible quoted from Jesus.
More lines than a African herd of zebras.

Production-wise, sorry, but Wyclef did a great job. I don't see how it sounded too commercial - as was the accusation - in 1998, and in 2022 it may as well be an underground DJ Premier mixtape recorded direct from AM radio, just one copy owned by the artist's mum. It's a clean sound for sure, but hardly conventional or pop or mainstream beyond Wyclef presumably making sure it wouldn't scare anyone off playing it on the radio. It's not the greatest rap album ever, or the greatest debut ever, but it's fucking solid for something the artist ended up disowning; and if it failed to knock Illmatic or Ready to Die or whatever from the throne, we can at least justify Can-I-Bus named in the same sentence, which isn't too shabby.

Kurupt - Kuruption! (1998)

Albums pretending to be the front page of a newspaper are always a massive pile of wank, except for this one which seems to have been somewhat slept on. Released in the wake of all that commotion about whether the east coast had a bigger one than the west coast, Kuruption! seems to have been an attempted exercise in bridge building, and one which fell on mostly deaf ears given that the rap media had already declared its own east coast heritage the bestest. While there was talk of the west having fallen off, fifty posthumous barrel scraping albums of Tupac promising to shag some New York rival's misses didn't do much to change anyone's mind. The media always needs an angle, some kind of narrative to shift units, and so the bicoastal rivalry divided neatly into west coast rap artists vainly seeking to relive that year when we bought their CDs on the one hand, and New York guy sneezes into a microphone - quick, sign the talented fucker! on the other.

Meanwhile, having arguably been right at the centre of a lot of the hostilities, Kurupt of the Dogg Pound leaves Death Row and records a bicoastal debut album, a double disc with one homegrown disc dedicated to the west coast, the other to the east and so featuring eastern guests, producers, and collaborators. If the message lacks subtlety, it's nevertheless preferable to everyone taking pot shots at one another and it's coming from a good place; and it works because it's a cracking set, possibly one of the best things in which Kurupt was ever involved. The western disc builds on the g-funk of previous years with bars spit over smooth R&B with just enough of a salty undercurrent to keep you on your toes - plenty of jazzy electric piano, beats from Dre, Battlecat, Soopafly, and Daz, amongst others; and pretty much without a dud to be heard. It would have made a great album in its own right.

The east coast disc brings in guests I mostly hadn't heard of - excepting Buckshot, Noreaga and Mr. Short Khop - presumably because they were all pals with chemistry rather than proven selling famous names. It works because the smooth west coast sound had spread east by this point, joining up as something more like film soundtrack but for the occasional stutter of Shaolin style discord - and No Feelings is particularly a belter, by the way. The two discs are different, but feel very much part of the same enterprise, at least in terms of mood - the usual blend of threats, boasting and general impatience somehow managing to come across as oddly amiable. Really, it's almost a classic soul album but for the obvious care one must take to avoid spilling its drink or look at it in a funny way; and Kurupt was twenty-five when he recorded this - twenty-fucking-five. If the man doesn't yet have a statue and you haven't been out campaigning for the same, at least have the decency to give this a listen in appreciation of a major talent.

Whodini - Greatest Hits (1992)

Being somewhere in the vicinity of a million years old, I've often found myself caught out and bewildered by use of the term old school when referring to rap, because these days old school means some multicoloured foetus who had a hit ringtone six months ago - you know, that thing which was just three minutes of handclap and some dude slurring meaningless gang gibberish, my balls be bigger than yo mama's 'hoooooood, or similar, over and over and 'hood pronounced with seven Os just as Tupac would have wanted it. Whodini, on the other hand, were proper old school dating back from even before they invented swearing and had to label rap music with Tipper stickers.

Once again, I'm following up a lead from about thirty years ago, one of those things I taped but apparently couldn't afford to buy whilst gaps remained to be filled in my Gary Numan collection. I had a look on Discogs but old rap CDs cost a fucking fortune now, or at least more than I'm willing to pay, leaving me with the option of either vinyl or greatest hits collections, and I've reached the point where I can't actually fit any more vinyl albums on the designated shelving. Whodini's Greatest Hits doesn't seem to contain Rap Machine, but never mind. It's close enough.

Whodini still exist and don't seem to have quite fallen off the edge of the map, but it's probably safe to assume the comeback would have happened by now if it was going to happen. Nevertheless, I'd say this stuff has been overlooked more than should have been the case, which is unfortunately the nature of the rap biz.

Whodini date from an era prior to anyone giving a shit about the greatest lyricist of all time, or conforming to some other guy's version of keeping it real, or downwardly mobile credentials. They got the fuck on with it, and it doesn't matter that their old school nursery rhyme cadence has been superseded by bigger sellers because it still delivers the goods. Nothing dates so quickly as a new idea, depending on the motivation, particularly if it has nothing going for it beyond being a new idea. Whodini did it for the right reasons and consequently somehow still sound as fresh as fuck after all these decades. The beats were programmed at the height of electro back when those squeaky clean Yamaha snare samples still seemed futuristic, and where their contemporaries may now sound slightly archaic and obvious, the raw energy and enthusiasm that went into this stuff has kept it alive.

Young guns may chortle at the absence of a parental advisory warning, or these clean cut men who clearly brushed their teeth every night before bed, but Magic's Wand and Haunted House of Rock - to name but two of the fourteen mammoth cuts assembled within - still blow most of the competition out of the water. In rap terms, we really need to start moving beyond the idea that nothing much happened before Run DMC.

C-Murder - The Truest Shit I Ever Said (2005)

C-Murder has, at least on a couple of occasions, been characterised as not much more than a Tupac impersonator, which has always struck me as a little unfair. Shakur's influence is undeniable and can be heard on certain tracks, but there's more to this guy's delivery, even if they share thematic common ground for reasons which should be fucking obvious. C-Murder's monologues lack the raucous celebration heard on much of Tupac's material, sounding positively introverted by comparison - a man on the edge mumbling and agonising to himself. It's intense, almost hard to listen to, and not actually like the work of any other rap artist that I can think of, once you listen closely.

Another thing which strikes me as a little unfair is C-Murder having been a resident of the stripey hole for a period now approaching two decades, following his supposed shooting of Steve Thomas in January, 2002. I'm no lawyer, but the case looks kind of patchy from over here, and it's possibly worth remembering that the American legal system often seems to have some difficulty telling the difference between actual use of firearms in murder cases and black men who rap about the same; but who the fuck knows?

C-Murder had issued four albums prior to incarceration, five if you include Tru Dawgs - although it's sort of a compilation - but not one which ever seemed quite so great as it probably should have been. Bossalinie from 1999 came pretty close to perfect but just wasn't quite there - way too many tracks, too many creaking skits, the usual trouble. Trapped in Crime could have learned something from previous mistakes but was ultimately hamstrung by the crisis of confidence which had seemingly overwhelmed the label, resulting in beats which aspired to snatch the crown back from that other New Orleans label by approximating what Mannie Fresh had been doing, while turning away from the producers who made No Limit great in the first place. So Truest Shit was his fifth album - sixth if we're counting Tru Dawgs - vocals recorded by his lawyer during visiting hours, then presumably striped onto the tracks after the fact.

I guess the sudden introduction of porridge to the artistic equation serves as one hell of a focus, because never even mind just great in context of the C-Murder back catalogue, The Truest Shit I Ever Said is a landmark rap album - intense as fuck but as ever kept in check by C-Murder's somber, contemplative delivery, and matched to the perfect range of beats - sharp, electronic and yet powerfully soulful. Even in tearing the club up, even during seemingly unapologetic tales of gunplay*, this is an album written by a man who has had a lot of time to think about this stuff, and his testimony is as powerful as you might hope.

Of course, it turns out he's released five more since this one, all vocalised from with the Louisiana State Penitentiary, which I've somehow missed because I've had a musically confusing decade. On the other hand, I make no claims towards being a rolling news service or having a finger on any particular pulse, so please feel free to use the above information as you see fit.

*: Possibly because he doesn't actually have anything to apologise for.

2Pac - Loyal to the Game (2004)

This return visit has been inspired by Eminem. I'd picked up a copy of Eminem's Kamikaze at CD Exchange and, as with most of his albums, it's good, even great, and almost a classic but not quite; and it occurred to me that it's strange how such a genuinely phenomenal lyricist and top shelf beatmaker has never quite delivered a classic album where even Spice 1 - off the top of my head - has at least four to his name; although admittedly I haven't listened to Infinite in a while, so it's probably that one if it's any of them. With every single album, Eminem always comes so close but somehow never quite gets there, and it's taken me a long fucking time to work out why that might be, or why I think that might be. It's the combination of his delivery with his beats - inordinately complex sprinkles of finely tuned particles, single syllables picking at the line in a sort of dizzying pizzicato which demands that the listener keep up; and which is dropped to a beat which often does something very similar but in musical terms, again with the pizzicato but this time as notes plucked over what may as well be the soundtrack to a silent movie illustrating the bad guy creeping tippy-toe up those stairs with an evil pantomime grin on his face. That's how it sounds to me anyway, and to break the problem down into basic English, the music and the delivery do roughly the same thing and so lack the sort of sonic contrast needed to make the thing work, or at least to make it work as it probably should; and I base this theory on 2Pac's Loyal to the Game which posthumously assembles Shakur's lines over beats provided by Eminem, and which is generally fucking fantastic and certainly a potentially classic album.

At the risk of enraging basement dwelling representatives of the fully intact cherry community, 2Pac was never the greatest lyricist of all time. He had an amazing delivery, stuff worth saying, and certainly qualifies as a great, but he was never the greatest; and while those first few albums might justifiably be termed classic and the rest are mostly decent, his posthumous reputation seems out of all proportion, not least because those posthumous albums have been pretty damn patchy, sprawling double disc sets presumably released as such so as to make the most of what few genuinely memorable tracks emerged from the final sessions. I get the impression that 2Pac's last months may have been mostly compulsive studio work, heavy dope paranoia, and hardly any sleep because that's how those albums sound. They're worth a listen, but they can be hard work and the beats, with one or two exceptions, are fucking terrible - bland karaoke funk which may as well have been lifted from the closing credits of low budget cop shows.

Whether by accident or design, as producer, Eminem's mission statement here seems to have been to finish 2Pac's legacy on a high note, something which at least reminds us how much we loved 2Pacalypse Now and Strictly 4 My N.I.G.G.A.Z. So Em's plinky-plonky Addams Family themes are here contrasted with a quite different sort of vocal, 2Pac's driven yet leisurely cruise through whatever was on his mind that day; and the combination is dynamite, bringing out the best of everyone. To be fair, it's kind of a weird listen, not least for pairing 2Pac with the likes of Obie Trice, Lloyd Banks, 50 Cent and others who were probably still propping up the walls of technical colleges back when 2Pac and Alanis Morissette were talking about opening that restaurant together; and it's weirder that 2Pac calls out his posthumous collaborators by name even as their own verses refer directly to his passing. I'd heard that Eminem hired a 2Pac impersonator for those beyond the grave shout outs, or else indulged in some sort of improbable tape wizardry, but it maybe doesn't matter because the joins are invisible and the whole thing hangs together beautifully, regardless of the potential time paradox. A few of these tracks are sort of familiar, with vocals lifted from existing recordings, or variant takes thereof, but Loyal to the Game nevertheless feels like a real living, breathing album rather than something scraped off the cutting room floor. It's emotionally powerful, intelligent, inspiring, and without all the exhausting beef of those posthumous Death Row releases; and is as such probably closer to how we need to remember the guy.

We should probably also keep in mind that this is the sort of thing Eminem is capable of when he has his eye on the ball, which is pretty impressive and should definitely count for a classic album. As though to illustrate the strength of Eminem's vision here, we end with four bonus tracks from fellow producers, not least among whom would be Scott Storch; and if they range from great to more of what we had on those Death Row discs, they sound so out of place as to belong to something else.

Contrary to the protests of certain nutcases, I still say he was a very naughty boy rather than the actual messiah, but Loyal to the Game at least stands as a memorial to what was so great about the guy before the picture got distorted.

Haystak - Portrait of a White Boy (2004)

Being 2019, I would hope we've all got over the thing with white rappers. I recall a few crackers of my unfortunate acquaintance getting a bit sniffy, or giggling and exclaiming yo whilst ironically twisting their fingers into funny shapes, apparently feeling somehow qualified to comment upon the legitimacy of an artist working in a genre with which they themselves were almost entirely unfamiliar, excepting the obligatory observation of It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back probably being the greatest rap album of all time, in my humble opinion. I listened to it today just to be sure, and it really isn't, besides which, no-one who wasn't a massive arsehole ever used the expression in my humble opinion.
 

Back in 2002, certain sectors of the actual rap biz, were themselves getting distinctly sniffy about white people in rap, which came to a head when the Source magazine campaigned for the abolition of Eminem. Whilst there are all sorts of reasons why Eminem was never quite so amazing as everyone seemed to think, the Source was driving like a wanker and ended up shooting itself in the foot over the whole thing for no good reason; and even Haystak - an innocent bystander if ever there was - found himself called out because people who write rap magazines are fucking idiots. For what it's worth, he hit back on Red Light.

Bitch, I ain't no redneck, they hear my shit and condemn it,
Vibe damn near called me a racial supremacist,
Like I'm a skinhead, a mother fucking Aryan.
I'll tell you what I ain't, I ain't no fucking vegetarian.

Red Light is from Portrait of a White Boy, which probably isn't even his best album, but it's up there, and it's the one that got itself stuck inside my CD player this month. As with most of Haystak's back catalogue, it renders any objection one may have regarding white rappers redundant because he's the genuine article. Of course, he talks about being white, but not as a gimmick and certainly not from any weird reactionary angle, but because he endures life at the bottom of the economic totem pole, down where class and race amount to pretty much the same end of the shitty stick; and what distinguishes Haystak from so many of his contemporaries is that he isn't even trying to work that whole white trash angle. Rather he just gets the fuck on with it, talking about getting by, sharing what he's learned, and striving to make something good out of not very much.

Haystak never went in for lyrical backflips, but his flow comes easily, or sounds like it comes easily. He's witty, and funny without having to crack jokes, and his testimony hits hard with a crushing weight that characterises the true greats of rap; and because I don't seem to be able to write about this one without coming across like a teacher writing out an end of term report for a particularly promising pupil, let's just say that Haystak is what the blues sound like in the twenty-first century - still stuck on some southern porch, trying hard not to be broke as fuck, and the twang and slide of Nashville, Mississippi and other places can still be heard woven into the more recent crunch and boom of that sound you don't ever want to hear coming from the vehicle which just pulled up as you're walking along, minding your own business.

I wouldn't say Haystak is the white Tupac, but mainly because such comparisons are fucking stupid, and I'm not even sure Tupac was the black Tupac; but Haystak is one of the greats - top ten, possibly five, with not a poor album to his name, and Portrait of a White Boy transcends all possible objections which could ever be raised by anyone who ever held a humble opinion.

Ja Rule - Pain is Love (2001)

Although my fingers have been conspicuously absent from anything which could be identified as the pulse for a long time, I have the impression of Ja Rule remembered as some third string also ran who shuffled off into obscurity following lyrical beatdowns from Eminem, 50 Cent, and others. My understanding is that it began with 50 Cent making a record upon which it was suggested that he'd seen Ja Rule do a poo in his pants in the queue at dinnertime and that he then saw Ja Rule put his hand into his pants to touch the poo and then Ja Rule sniffed his fingers and looked pleased; and 50 Cent made the record because that's the sort of record by which he customarily elevated his public profile and accordingly hit sales targets. Ja Rule retaliated, and then everyone else got sucked in. Eminem got to take a few lyrical potshots at someone harder than Morris Minor & the Majors, so that made for a nice change; and The Source magazine suddenly and coincidentally decided that Ja Rule was the true legit 4 lyfe face of da realness 'n' shit; and Death Row's Suge Knight weighed in, because obviously we'd all been wondering what his take on the situation would be - and his take was something about Dr. Dre being a homosexual and how Tupac would have loved Ja Rule had he not snuffed it, what with Suge having been established as the official organ of Tupac's legacy 4 real + tru 2 da streetz IDT.

It's all bollocks really. Ja Rule was never the next Tupac, if such a thing were ever required; and even if he was just one of many frowning tattooed baldies with shirt allergies who came to the fore in the late nineties, it's not like he didn't have enough of his own thing going on. Expecting generic rap landfill, I remember being shocked at how good this album was when Rodney Dell lent it to me; and I've finally picked up a copy for myself, and it still sounds way above the average.

Rule always reminded me of DMX more than Tupac, although admittedly there's not much in it, and the latter posthumously guests on So Much Pain, should anyone need to make the comparison. I must admit, on first hearing the track, I thought fuck, they were right, he really does sound like a Tupac impersonator, which I suppose means that he actually really doesn't, so that's good to know. Lyrically, Rule falls short of amazing, but he's decent - at least as much as 50 Cent ever was and without having to talk about what happened in the queue at dinnertime; and he can work up a mood as powerful as anyone with that bluesy growl.

What really makes Pain is Love is the contrast of the aforementioned bluesy growl with Irv Gotti's razor sharp and criminally underrated production - an elegant update of certain Motown era beats using a sampler without any of its usual angularity, resulting in songs which throb with life and sounded fucking great on the radio with no hint of compromise. Therefore fuck da haterz 'n' shit.

2Pac - 2Pacalypse Now (1991)

This one didn't make much sense to me the first time I heard it - picked up from the library out of curiosity - although I'm still not entirely sure why. Possibly it was simply a case of a perfectly respectable debut album unable to live up to the hype which came in its wake. More recently I bought the thing, recalling how I'd found it initially underwhelming, but suspecting I probably just needed to give it more time on the grounds that I'd been unable to prise 1993's Strictly 4 My N.I.G.G.A.Z. out of the CD player for about six months.

There's been so much bollocks surrounding the posthumous legend of Tupac Shakur that reasonable persons could be forgiven for shrugging and walking off in the opposite direction in search of something which isn't surrounded by a cloud of angry nutters each claiming to be the only one to truly understand what He was trying to say. Firstly, in case it isn't obvious, he was principally a rapper rather than a messiah. He's not the messiah, he's a very naughty boy, as Mrs. Shakur probably never bothered pointing out to anyone. Additionally, much has been made of Tupac's revolutionary and intellectual credentials, the former coming from having been raised amongst various Panther types and representatives of the Black Consciousness Movement, the latter from apparent possession of a library card. Tupac's bedside reading lists can be found all over the internet, and whilst it's smashing that he loved to curl up with a good book, it's probably wise to not get too carried away on that score, given that at least some of what he read was pure crap, Linda Goodman's Sun Signs for example. Whilst we're here, I never thought his poetry was that amazing either; for instance, the N word as an acronym for Never Ignorant Getting Goals Accomplished - seriously?

Nevertheless, as rapper and storyteller, the lad clearly had something, an effortless and athletic way with words and a compelling, punchy delivery that was a bit like having someone poking you in the chest with a finger for three minutes. His rhyme schemes were massive great colourful cat's cradles of images at a time when at least half of the rap world was still asking us to put our hands in the air and wave them like we just didn't care over some pingy cowbell laden children's TV theme tune; and whilst he may not quite have been amongst the first rappers to just come right out and say it, he was in there somewhere, and as such ended up as a founding father of gangsta rap, if we really must call it that. Typically, following the whole genre back to this particular source - which isn't such a stretch given how many careers have been spun from variations on the bald, angry, black man theme - 2pac, as with NWA and Above the Law, never really sounded quite like everyone seems to remember, and certainly had a lot more going on than guns, money, and hoes. Such gangsta staples turn up on 2Pacalypse Now as you would expect, but not to the exclusion of anything else he felt he needed to address, and you would have to be an idiot to mistake the angle for anything other than what it is. The don't try this at home, kids disclaimer is absent due to an assumption of the audience having at least half a brain and being able to tell the difference between reportage, protest, general complaints registered and an idiot waving a gun around exclaiming awesome! Chuck D's comment about rap being the black CNN strongly applies.

Musically this album was perched on the cusp of sampling and all the wicky-wicky DJ stuff, or at least the point at which sampling technology ceased sounding quite so corny as it had done at the close of the previous decade. So there are some nice chunky beats here, and very little cheese, and a palpable sense of the excitement of creating this sort of stuff and of hearing it for the first time, which has, against all odds, prevented its sounding particularly dated.

2Pacalypse Now wasn't his greatest album by some way, but it was a good one, and if he must be remembered as the voice of a generation, he is admittedly well chosen.

Hole - Live Through This (1994)

According to a bloke on the internet, fresh evidence has recently come to light regarding Courtney Love's supposed assassination of Kurt Cobain, the widely venerated singer man of Nirvana and the Linda McCartney of Hole. I'm not sure what this supposed evidence might be because at the time I was busy watching paint dry and found it impossible to tear myself away, but the important thing was nevertheless of such quality as to inspire a bunch of blokes on a popular social networking site to express their views, which is nice because as you know blokes on popular social networking sites tend to keep their views to themselves as a rule. One of them daringly opined that Kurdt Cobain was the voice of a generation, which works providing you discount the great majority of yoots present within that same generation who never gave two shits about the guy, you know, like anyone who ever bought a Tupac CD. If he was the voice of a generation, was he really ever saying anything beyond I want my mummy? Whilst There There is often hailed as a great album, and the success of singles like I Got A Pain In My Stummick and I Hurt My Finger surprised everyone, were they really good enough to justify the proposition that Kurtd Cobain, the Lady Diana Spencer of Grunge, died for our sins?

I would say not, and would further deny his being anything besides a modest talent - not even a member of the best Seattle band, that being Tad. He had a pretty face and was able to articulate a vague sense of whining dissatisfaction with modern life that could stand for almost anything from I done a poo in my pants to my dad sucks without alienating those who knew their period of rebellion would last just long enough to get them through college; and of course there were those natty little tunes, the plaid shirt Beatles with a fuzzbox; and onto this canvas was projected whatever people needed at the time, which unfortunately turned out to be a sort of rock Jesus for the mumbling and disgruntled when he shot himself and the legend turned all Sidney Vicious for a while. More annoying than Kurt's unexpected sainthood was that the elevation of such human sacrifices tends to require the parallel canonisation of a devil, which turned out to be Courtney Love probably because she had a massive gob and was a woman.

I can't speak for Love's actual character, my understanding of it being based on a media image that I'm not inclined to trust. Perhaps it is true that Kurtd Cobain, the innocent Queen of Hearts of Rock was led astray by another one of those crazy mad period women, forced to take heroin because she had told him it was just some sweeties or something, and that this terrible titty-witch didst rob us of a noble soul who would otherwise have remained stood to this day upon a high mesa with his hair blowing majestically in the wind like someone hunky from The Lord of the Rings, his beautiful spirit free and untramelled, whatever that means, but I seriously doubt it.

Conspiracy theory even stretches to suggest that the mighty Cobain wrote most of this album. I'll concede that there may be parallels, notably the preponderance of milk as a theme, but it's nothing that can't be accounted for by Kurdt having told her indoors all about his great day at the studio with the guys whilst she was washing the dishes, making him some chips, or ironing his lumberjack shirt ready for the pop concert. Furthermore, if Cobain was really capable of writing songs this good, you would think he might have kept one or two for inclusion on his own records.

Courtney Love may indeed be the world's most enormous cockmongler for all I know, but I rest my judgement on her music being as it exists independent of any supposed media harridanry, and particularly as the rest looks like the usual stuff where it's funny when Keith Richards pulls that crap, but a chick, man - that be fucked up.

Live Through This is probably one of the greatest rock albums of all time, in my view - a record so good that when I first bought a copy it took me about six months before I finally managed to turn it over and listen to the second side. Lyrically, it's both deeply affecting and chilling in suggesting the horrors of a less than ideal upbringing or the more unpleasant corners of human sexual politics without spelling everything out which, I would cautiously suggest, grants Live Through This an appeal beyond the Riot Grrrl audience, something more trailer home than student bar. It's the sound of the shittiest day you've ever had, but with tunes. As an album, it's so good that there's almost no point writing about it, aside from to remind people of its being good, and that Courtney Love's media presence should generally be regarded as a separate, possibly unrelated entity. I've nothing against Nirvana beyond believing them to have been somewhat overrated for a band who recorded a song about how they only wanted the really cool people listening to their music, but this is as good as they could have sounded had they been something other than an Iron Maiden tribute act.