2003: 20-1

Yo!

20. "Like Glue" - Sean Paul
19. "03 Bonnie & Clyde" - Jay-Z
18. "Step In the Name of Love" - R Kelly
17. "Milk Shake" - Kelis
16. "Baby Boy" - Beyonce
15. "Cadillac on 22's" - David Banner
14. "Crazy in Love" - Beyonce
13. "12:51" - The Strokes
12. "Hey Ya!" - Outkast
11. "Through the Wire" - Kanye West
10. "Cry Me A River" - Justin Timberlake
9. "The Seed" - Cody ChestnuTT
8. "Wanksta" - 50 Cent
7. "I Believe In A Thing Called Love" - The Darkness
6. "The Way You Move" - Outkast
5. "Rock Your Body" - Justin Timberlake
4. "Growing On Me" - The Darkness
3. "Deliverance" - Bubba Sparxxx
2. "In Da Club" - 50 Cent
1. "Ignition (Remix)" - R Kelly

Artist of the Year: 50 Cent
Producer of the Year: Timbaland

2003: #1 - "Ignition (Remix)"

Running through a list of things that might happen at a club with R Kelly probably would run well over the three minutes, but here, he distills the essence of an awesome night into the most perfect pop nugget of the decade - at 3:07, it almost guarantees that you have to hit replay to hear it all again. It's like someone's incessant Facebook updating that's actually worth reading.

And his soulful storytelling (or live-blogging?) is so smooth, likeable and real that you almost don't even realize that anything else is going on in the song. But there definitely are a few choice moments, like the snare hits on "F*** somebody", and also the song hits its stunning peak on the chorus. Because the whole song is one long hook, it's almost as if those drums in there exist to let us know, "Yeah, this is the chorus" in case we were still too caught up in the verses or bridges.

We were in our early 20's when the remix to "Ignition" came out, and though a good night out for us was probably nothing compared to the time R Kelly was having, at least we had this to aspire to, even when things seemed grim. Thanks, Kells.

2003: 20-2

What will #1 be? Perhaps not as obvious as some of the others, but if you think hard you will get it. Winner gets a prize package of 5 discs of their choice (anything from 1990 through 2009).

20. "Like Glue" - Sean Paul
19. "03 Bonnie & Clyde" - Jay-Z
18. "Step In the Name of Love" - R Kelly
17. "Milk Shake" - Kelis
16. "Baby Boy" - Beyonce
15. "Cadillac on 22's" - David Banner
14. "Crazy in Love" - Beyonce
13. "12:51" - The Strokes
12. "Hey Ya!" - Outkast
11. "Through the Wire" - Kanye West
10. "Cry Me A River" - Justin Timberlake
9. "The Seed" - Cody ChestnuTT
8. "Wanksta" - 50 Cent
7. "I Believe In A Thing Called Love" - The Darkness
6. "The Way You Move" - Outkast
5. "Rock Your Body" - Justin Timberlake
4. "Growing On Me" - The Darkness
3. "Deliverance" - Bubba Sparxxx
2. "In Da Club" - 50 Cent

2003: #2 - "In Da Club"

Although some people don't necessarily think of 50 Cent - or even Dr. Dre, who produced - as a sonic pioneer, the fact is that, in 2003, very few rap hits sounded like this - a perfect amalgamation of hard party beats, minimalist minor key tough-guy synths, quoteworthy hip-hop sloganeering, and accessibly simple yet mesmerizing, tongue-twisting vocals. And they were so cool and slick (and catchy) about it, we almost didn't notice how unique it all was.

But now that nearly every moderately respectable street-level rap track has those huge hand claps, sparse keyboards and relentless percussive synths, and every rapper is giving his own updated imitation of Fifty's slurred verbal acrobatics and catch-phrasing, it's easy to look back and see the major influence that this track had on pop music. And, giving it a second (millionth) listen in 2010, it's easy to remember why we loved it so much.

2003: #3 - "Deliverance"

Bubba Sparxxx's "Deliverance" - or more specifically, his 2003 album of the same name - was made for all those so-called music fans who boast, "I listen to everything... except rap and country". It's worth picking up, if you were ever interested in hearing Timbaland-style Southern rap fused with subtle honky-tonk and bluegrass elements. And not in a shitty Kid Rock kind of way either.

In any case, we loved the title track of the album despite it being neither pure rap nor true country; Bubba spits some mean verses about being a white trash redneck in a bling bling world (A highlight: "Nothing could atone for the pain you've endured/ The blood you shed is still stained in your valor/ You took your wealth and knowledge and gave it to the poor/ Only to discover that your savior's manure"), but Timbaland's sing-songy choruses get equal time here, turning the whole thing into some very accessible pop-rap.

And while there are some acoustic guitars, corny square dance clapping, and lyrics about fishing and moonshine, there's nothing overtly country about the track either. It's just a very unique sounding Southern hip-hop song, one of the best of the decade, or ever.

2003: #4 - "Growing On Me"

For our money, The Darkness had an amazing year in 2003 - two songs on the DOTY Top 20, neither of which were the best song on Permission to Land (that honor goes to the AC/DC stomp of "Givin' Up", one of the few literal, unambiguous love songs on the album - it's about a love affair with heroin, described in explicit detail).

Second single "Growing On Me" was the tougher cousin to the silly, glammy "I Believe In a Thing Called Love" - if the latter was theatrical, melodic hair metal (think Scorpions-meets-Queen), the former was pure meat-and-potatoes Van Halen, complete with super-distorted arpeggiated and shouted backup vocals.

Lead singer Justin Hawkins has (hilariously) denied that the song is about sexually transmitted diseases, but despite deliberately vague (and also hilarious) lyrics, it so obviously is. I guess that's part of the joke.

2003: #5 - "Rock Your Body"

If "Cry Me A River" was J.T.'s attempt at a big, splashy, serious mini-epic to announce his arrival as a solo artist, then "Rock Your Body" was him saying, "And I can do this, too."

It's just a really fun dance-pop nugget, a Neptunes-influenced update of the discoey stuff Michael Jackson used to do in the late 70's, sorta fluffy in an ex-boy band kind of way, but with just enough soulful edge to make it work.

2003: #6 - "The Way You Move"

(Not the official video - sadly, Outkast and their people join the awful cast of characters who disable embedding of their videos)

"The Way You Move" was another out-of-leftfield move in the idiosyncratic career of Outkast. Not content with being masters of Southern-fried G-Funk, they moved on to Southern-fried, outer-space P-Funk in the late 90's, before assaulting the pop charts in the 2000's with a flurry of ferociously original but fun pop-rap hits. Big Boi's "The Way You Move" was an outlier, even in this bunch - a slow-burning Miami-bass sex-funk song, 808s building up into a groove accented by sassy horns, soulful vocals, and Big Boi's ever-evolving conversational delivery. At the end of the first verse, we're not sure if he's giving it up to a bassy speaker system or to womanly anatomy ("Trunk rattlin’, like two midgets in the back seat wrestlin’"), but either way it's a great image.

2003: #7 - "I Believe In A Thing Called Love"

Now that hipster irony has died, it's safe to listen to The Darkness without feeling like a puerile jackass. Seriously, how awful was it six years ago when folks would hype Permission to Land by calling it the perfect soundtrack to ridin' around in a Camaro, as if that were a good thing (or was it an ironically bad/cool thing?)?

In any case, coming from legitimate, non-ironic fans of "cheese-metal" (we can call it that because we actually like it, and embrace its cheesiness), "I Believe In A Thing Called Love" wasn't good because it mocked hard rock cliches, but given that it did - including the ridiculous operatic falsetto vocals, stupidly sleazy lyrics, cheesy double entendres, harmonized axe-work, Neil Diamond references (?), and dum-dum riffing of all our favorite metal bands - did it well, and had one of the best verse melodies of any hard rock song ever, it ended up being a huge success not only as a metal send-up, but as an actual metal song.

2003: #8 - "Wanksta"

50 Cent's early tuff guy image totally belied the fact that he had some of the hookiest pop-rap songs of all time. The simple melodic hook in "Wanksta" is no exception, and we'd rank it up there with "Nuthin' But A G Thing" and "Big Poppa" as one of the more recognizable and memorable keyboard lines in rap.

Of course, Fiddy is no longer gangsta - though he is pushing some product these days - but musically that was never really the point. The siren-wail of "Wanksta" was always more Warren G than N.W.A., and like the G-Funk all-stars of the early 90's, 50 Cent continued to bridge the gap from the streets to the pop charts.

2003: #9 - "The Seed"

(Not the official video.)

In what may end up being the biggest hit of the strange career of a lo-fi hip-hop singer-songwriter (!) who released one 100-minute album in 2002 and then basically vanished from the planet, Cody ChestnuTT croons the unforgettable and entirely unsexy refrain, "Push my seed in her bush for life", with such child-like gusto that hearing this song (and the rest of his self-proclaimed masterpiece The Headphone Masterpiece) almost makes you understand - why, of course this guy has disappeared forever, because he is insane, and is currently singing "The Seed" on a busted-up acoustic guitar in some Atlanta alleyway.

Thankfully, he isn't, and may have a follow-up album coming this year, but it wouldn't be hard to believe if he were.

2003: #10 - "Cry Me A River"

With "Cry Me A River", Justin Timberlake established himself as the post-modern King of Pop, a more self-aware version of Thriller-era Jacko, where the protagonist of the song (and video) is not an a victimized innocent (see "Billie Jean"), but a conflicted anti-hero who clearly has his own faults and is not afraid to put them out there for the entire pop world to see.

Sonically, the closest to M.J. that J.T. and Timbaland get is through the use of some pretty upper-register vocals, and production arrangements that sound like an army of ghostly Justin falsettos (attacking the ghost of Britney?).

The rest of it is almost standard-issue Timbaland - creepy clavs, odd syncopated percussion sounds, slightly dissonant non-Western melodies - in other words, exactly what we've come to expect from Mr. Mosely, but still pretty good.

2003: 20-11

20. "Like Glue" - Sean Paul
19. "03 Bonnie & Clyde" - Jay-Z
18. "Step In the Name of Love" - R Kelly
17. "Milk Shake" - Kelis
16. "Baby Boy" - Beyonce
15. "Cadillac on 22's" - David Banner
14. "Crazy in Love" - Beyonce
13. "12:51" - The Strokes
12. "Hey Ya!" - Outkast
11. "Through the Wire" - Kanye West

In fairly strong year - stiff competition between dozens of very good songs, though near the top, not too many truly great ones - two songs stand out as undeservedly forgotten. Sandwiched in between monster hits from Beyonce and Outkast, among others, The Strokes' "12:51" and David Banner's "Cadillac on 22's" probably haven't been played on our local radio stations since late 2003, but we surely give them a spin (ok, a click) from time to time.



The Strokes' song was sort of written off as a Cars rip, and while it does feature some pretty Ocasek-esque keyboards, it actually sounds less like their 70's faux-punk brethren than almost anything they'd done to this point. By replacing any modest flirtations with arena rock bombast with a very subtle twee-pop melody, The Strokes actually avoided sounding too cheesy (a la Guided by Voices), and had one of their most memorable hits.



Believe it or not, I actually don't like Banner's other, bigger hit, "Play", because the too-vulgar (!) lyrics outweigh the awesome beat, so I will gladly pay tribute to the late-period Jackson 5 sampling "Cadillac on 22's", which is almost the polar opposite of "Play" - an introspective, organic-sounding Southern rap yarn about the trials and tribs of a pusher ("Maybe hell ain't a place meant for us to burn/ Maybe Earth is just a place for us to learn/ Bout yo love, yo will and grace/ Sometimes I wish I wasn't born in the first place"), with enough soul and substance for a Marvin Gaye song. Too bad it doesn't exactly make you want to dance.