Hey folks!

Today’s Best Album of 2001 match is:

#49 Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, NO MORE SHALL WE PART

Listen on Spotify or YouTube

vs.

#80 Roots Manuva, RUN COME SAVE ME

Listen on Spotify or YouTube

To vote, follow this link to the Google Form. You will need a Google login to vote. If you can’t or won’t have one, let me know ASAP (either through this newsletter, my email [kentmbeeson@hey.com] or on the Best Album Brackets Bluesky account) and I’ll see what I can do.

We have one Designated Cheerleader… kind of. Below is the DC that @megabrow12.bsky.social wrote for Roots Manuva’s 1999 album BRAND NEW SECOND HAND, which still more or less applies, though I’ve highlighted one important bit. See if you can find it. Take it away, Shamp!

"Alright Dave? What are you up to then?"

"Working on a COVID19 vaccine, aren't I?"

"Are you?"

"I just said I was didn't I? I'm working flat out mate. Got to have a vaccine strategy that’s laser specific, targeting those domains of the virus's structure that are absolutely critical for docking with a cell, while avoiding the parts that could make things worse. While the world's watching and waiting. How about you then?"

"I'm writing a thing to try and get a mainly US, mainly rock based grour Show the Inspector to an English rap album without resorting to "please do give it a listen, I promise it's not shit!!

"Crikey. Good luck with that".

By 1999, I've pretty much decided that US rap is not for me. And all the rap I've heard is US rap. There were UK rap artists, many were very good, but they were making US rap, or trying to replicate it at least. I can hear the skill and invention, but I can't identify with it. It’s not aimed at me though is it? I'm a middle class English man - Fight The Power sounds amazing on a Spike Lee film, but it blaring out of the speakers of Jim's Ford Focus on the way to a nice country pub...jars. And that's fine, not everything is for everyone - I liked what I liked and was almost certainly overly negative about what I didn't like I've mostly grown out of that one). There was also the question of the language - the violence, the lyrical treatment of women and gay men. Twitter is an awful place to debate anything nuanced, and I understand this is not a straight right/wrong issue, but we all have to make our own choices, and I didn't enjoy it*..and really when we stop being musicier-than-thou for a bit, aren't we supposed to enjoy it?

And then the NME put out a free CD some point in 1999 (they did 3 or 4 a year) - the last track is Juggle Tings Proper by Roots Manuva and it blew my tiny mind. It's rap, very definitely in it's genre, with bass that makes your fingers tingle, but it's somehow very English. It's closer to home. And it's great. I immediately love it. I play that track 20 times straight and go and buy the album the very next day. The whole album is great - it's full of bass and hooks and this young man, sounding decades older than he is, delivering his sermons, cracking a joke, telling you his stories - and they're brilliant stories - and it's his. All his. His voice, his sound, his stories and there's nothing like it in 1999 for me. I have no frame of reference for this, I just love every second. But it's more than that. It's a doorway into a previously inaccessible world, and it's a lesson for me to try something different, to broaden my musical horizons, to stop being such a dick about music I assume to be inferior to what I already like.

Here's the thing though. It gets better. After Brand New Second Hand, there's Run Come Save Me, a step forward in cohesion and added genuine bangers, and then there's Awfully Deep - mature, darker, still with a glint in it's eye. I'd put those opening three albums up against almost anyone.

So far, each of these lovely tournaments has thrown up albums I'd never heard before, that became new favorites. This might just be yours, so please do give it a listen - I promise it’s not shit.

*except I love Simon Says, also in this tournament, because everyone's a massive hypocrite - especially me.

Thanks again, Shamp!

Click here to see the current results for the entire tournament, and click here to see the current results for the prediction bracket contest.

Thanks,

Kent