New Basement Jaxx

I am also happy that people are saying there's nothing like Romeo, which I never thought was much cop in the first place (ditto for most of Rooty, actually).

I've come to the conclusion that this album was sent to me by God. It's that amazing.

I was all prepared to like it, I wanted to like it, but after two listens I'm still not even close to really feeling a single track (well, maybe number 14, but not in any great way)! what's wrong with me? More later on the (no doubt horrendously wrong and perverse) criticisms I have of it.

I think people often look at the Neptunes' crushing omnipresence and (as Sterling notes) ease-of-identification, and confuse that with crushing self-derivative repetition. There are actually quite a few "run-of-the-mill" Neptunes tracks (stuff like "U Don't Have To Call", "Wait A Minute" and some of their work with Latrelle springs to mind) but I reckon they tended towards self-derivativeness in '01 more than in '02-'03.

I reviewed Clones and felt it was sort of a technicality criticising them for doing not alot wrong really, ie all the tracks were great ideas but great ideas that were difficult to endure because they did feel totally Neptunes the entire time, not sure how long they can keep that up, the simple fact is not every artist will sound great working with the Neptunes, but they don't let that stop them.

Also they're working alot more within the limits of genre than someone like Basement Jaxx.

I thought the Justin tracks were great because he gave them a new direction aswell as vice versa.

Neptunes - rockin' the party and selling shitloads of records.

I'll take both thank you very much.

There's something spoiled about Neptunes bitching. Oh yeah, there's these great producers who produce a fusion of live funk and hip-hop that's simultaneously futuristic and traditional, and not only is it a new sound but it's also really catchy and it dominates the charts, and they manage to keep churning out great new tunes for years. Yeah, that really sucks man, I'm so sick of them!

YEAH.

FUCK.

(PS Agree that Pharell has a thin voice, and I didn't like Frontin' for ages, but I think it takes off when Jay-Z and the synths come in... and I don't really think it sounds like Beautiful, except they both have guitar riffs)

Okay of the songs I listed the styles are, in order: minimal old skool, indian, indie-pop, fluid digi-funk, dancehall, stiff live funk, disco (also note the perversity of making the digital funk fluid and the live funk stiff!). Now it's true that these manage to sound more similar than seven songs by different artists/producers working in those separate styles, but I'm not sure what more can be expected. You could say, "well, they could be Basement Jaxx!", but there's a reason why everyone is calling Kish Kash the album of the year and it's that they raise the bar for this sort of thing pretty fucking high (although I suspect if Basement Jaxx released thirty tunes a year they'd probably be repeating themselves a bit too).

And I'm not uncritical towards The Neptunes - I could talk at length about what they do that doesn't work and why it doesn't work. Like why "U Don't Have To Call", the little "situations will arise" bit aside, is pretty useless. And even that sung bit gets reprised in Jay-Z's far-superior "Fuck All Night" so there's no use for the original). Or how In Search Of... is largely overrated and Clones is underwhelming in spite of its good ideas. Or how Justified falls down frequently (that's as much Justin and Timbaland's faults though).

I think Ronan's post is OTM. There is something exhausting about The Neptunes' constant parade of unmistakable production work, but that exhaustion comes from the totality more than specific instances of production-work/songcraft, which when viewed in isolation are often astonishingly clever and (most importantly in my book) instinctively-but-surprisingly funky. This is why releasing a compendium like Clones is a bad idea - it blurs the qualities of each particular tune into a general haze of Neptunes-ness, such that accusations of self-derivativeness become tempting even when they're not accurate.

In contrast, I find I love The Neptunes most as a series of instances - the blitzkrieg blast of Busta's "Call The Ambulance", the mindmelting rhythm of Clipse's "Ego", the peerless groove of Jay-Z's "Nigga Please" which seems to require extra limbs to do it justice, the compulsive pop-ness of Philly's Most Wanted's "Cross The Border of Kelis's "Popular Thug" (two possibly self-derivative but nonetheless irresistible moments), every element exactingly measured to produce maximum joy.

Haha and god nobody even tried to explain what a generic timba track was (tho yeah you listen to the Tim and Magoo albums and you can sorta guess but hello Missy's four albums all TOTALLY DIFFERENT)

Jay-Z on the other hand could give a sewing contest a massive sense of occasion.

And I'm only on track 4.

I think you're tying yourself in knots here a bit. If it's inherently a bad idea for the Neptunes to put out a compilation of their work, then they really must suck.

But as it is Clones is pretty good--it's just patchy. Still, I count six great tracks, six decent ones, three weak ones, and we'll just agree to pretend the two rock tracks aren't there. Could have been better, but good enough for me.

And In Search Of is so not overrated! I love that album (first version anyway).

All good producers have a style, that's how they get work, and one of the main reasons for buying a compilation by any producer would be because you like their style and you want to hear lots of examples of it in a row!

Ben I think you're perhaps reading my argument to be more damning than it was intended to be. I don't think it's illegitimate to say that one of the more appealing aspects of The Neptunes is that they work across lots of different musical contexts, and that making "The Neptunes" the context can dilute this attribute slightly. When I say "releasing a compendium like Clones is a bad idea" I mean that it's bad insofar as it encourages accusations of repetitiveness.

Because everything on Clones is new it invites considerations of the album as a unified and complete body of work, something to be listened to from beginning to end. At this stage of the game listening to ten Neptunes tracks in one sitting, to my mind tends to ram home the similarities b/w each track, and indeed the similarities found in all of The Neptunes' work (nb. this is not a problem when dancing to ten Neptunes tracks in a row for the obvious reason, although I don't think Clones is necessarily suited to that).

If you actually listen to it like a compilation to be delved into a track or two at a time, it works much better. And yeah, it's very convenient to have all the songs rounded up on one cd!

"And In Search Of is so not overrated! I love that album (first version anyway)."

It's a great album, but I'm sick of people saying "The Neptunes better stop churning out identikit singles and start making their second N.E.R.D. masterpiece" - I mean wtf? What is the inherent qualitative difference?

I mean, 'Plug It In', 'Lucky Star', 'Good Luck', 'Cish Cash'...awww man, I'm a slave to the rhythm. Watch me dance to these anytime they get dropped in a club.