T.I. AND JAY-Z WITH KANYE WEST AND LI'L WAYNE: Swagga Like Us

These are the days, all right. I realise that it is virtually impossible to comprehend just how explosive and brilliant a year for music 2008 has been, even with a quarter of it left to go and the potential for even greater explosions of brilliance, from the cowering gated communities of the regurgitated PR blabbering which now passes for printed music journalism, or indeed from alleged music message boards overpopulated by the kind of people who talk to themselves at bus stops or hang around the school gates at home time. The “industry,” weighed down to the point of suffocation by the fear-induced need to pander to a diminishing demographic of ageing solvent retards, would much rather you, the consumer (never the music lover, heaven forbid), stick like a cockroach to Evo-Stik to “brand loyalty,” buying the wholly uncalled for fourth album by the Verve out of guilt, or those “acclaimed” Fleet Foxes or Glasvegas CDs from which you get no kicks and which you’ll quietly be escorting down to the secondhand shop in six months’ time, giving four stars to a two-star review of the latest Oasis album whose contents bring new meaning to the adjective “ponderous.” Make do and mend. Kneel to the white elephant of the trying and overtested. As much of a twerp as David Cameron will always be, his remarks the other day about the overrated virtue of experience could be applied to the music business with infinitely more aptness.

Experience has certainly saddened me in this respect. The startling resurgence of hip hop in 2008, the rebooting (or de-bootyfying?) of R&B, the completely unexpected second (and in my opinion greater) coming of grime – take my word for it, readers, it’s like trying to sell sex to a cheese shop stuffed with eunuchs. So I merely have to shrug my shoulders and conclude that it’s their loss; that the kids who routinely blast out “Swagga Like Us” on their mobiles at the back of the bus have an instinctive understanding of the magic of great pop which is de facto greater, deeper and more important than a chloroformed lecture hall full of “experts” who’ve heard too much to be moved by anything any more.

The opening, overiced skating rink stalagmite-dripping M.I.A. sample on “SLU” is immediate and terrifying enough to seize the listener by both lapels – a palpable starkness that places it firmly amidst the central shards of Broken 2008 Britain – that CAN’T YOU SEE WHAT’S HAPPENING desperate cry (masking a knowing grin) which the Clash kept trying to pin down (and Strummer should have lived to hear both “SLU” and “Paper Planes” – maybe the British public will do us all a favour and give these songs a one-two Frankie-style chart domination in due course). “Paper Planes” terrifies and elates in a way it took M.I.A. some time to reach and the shattering bass drones of the intro to “SLU” render its gun-toting friendship electric, particularly when the bass climbs up to meet the voice in the third loop (NO escape fucker!) and keyboards arrange themselves in equal parts Human League geometrics (the characteristic one long note followed by two double speed notes ascension, all in itself half the real tempo of the song, routinely used to build the bridges of Human League songs) and Robert Wyatt poignancy (compare curlicued notes with “Sea Song” and this).

Then the beats, those tetra-headed, eerily determined military two-step (meeting 2step) drum tattoos, a bass ample and thick enough to drown a continent in treacle, a sureness which will not entertain disputation; and then the voices, the towering babble of voices. I think of the procession of “solos” in “SLU” as an equivalent to those old Norman Granz Jazz At The Philharmonic jam sessions, where the greatest improvisers of their age take their choruses in succession, almost like a relay race, although of course there is a greater purpose to “SLU” than simply a jam session. It’s akin to hearing Bird, Rollins, Trane and Ornette soloing, one after the other, with the “No one on the corner” acting as a kind of unifying/unison riff.

First, Kanye (who also produces), who swerves with acid beauty from naked voice to Autotune in his astounded “hundred thousand trillion” – and here is where the advancing New Pop/electro/hip hop interface solidifies into liquid; West, a visionary who’s taken on Daft Punk just as Derrick May and Juan Atkins took on Depeche and Soft Cell a generation past, who has (with Weezy) rescued the Autotune from its status as a lazy tool for inadequately imperfect singers and made it work as an active and creative instrument; with West and Weezy the Autotune sounds rough, fumbling, not quite tactile, and so utterly new and exciting. “I’m Christopher Columbus, y’all just the pilgrims” he exclaims to the world; he places Mick Jagger and asthma attacks on the same aesthetic scale before his payoff: “’Cause a slave my whole life, now I’m the master!” followed by an ecstatic tongue ejection of “Naaaa-na-naaaa” as in “I won” and “McCain won’t.”

Then the baton is passed to the way past eek-a-boo-static Jay-Z – this track, possibly with new verses from Young Jeezy, Nas, Andre 3000 and others, is scheduled to appear on Blueprint 3, which promises to provide one of the abovementioned late brilliant explosions – wriggling as only he can (“Can’t wear skinny jeans ‘cause my nines don’t fit”), dishing out fashion tips which turn Trinny and Susannah into Somerfield’s specially reduced price eat by yesterday celery with a tip of the Hova hat to Art of Noise (“checkin’ my fresh, checkin’ checkin’ my fresh”), gasping the sort of “yes” only he can gasp (“when the girls say YESSSSS…”) like a space maroonee getting his first gulp of oxygen in 19 days, riding the surf of the bridge with the admirably untogether chorus of “Hoooo-vahhhh,” slacking with defiant dignity.

In the third verse Li’l Weezy breaks the harmolodic barrier; swimming and swooning in his Autotuned Atlantis (“No one on the corner has swagger like MOI!”), scrambling his labials and gutturals (“Pap! No mas!” “Fo’ tires!”), fascination superseding Adidas meaning, slurring his vowels like Ayler trapped in the Lyricon, and the consummating lip lick of “I know it’s us ‘cause we’re the only thing you talk about!” before he disappears, very slowly and reluctantly, back into the chorus (“And I’m gone!” “Bye!” “Yeah!”).

T.I. takes up the baton for the home strait (“Hah, you see?” “That’s right” – a seamless succession to Weezy) as he ties all of the song’s proud strands together (“Spin real life on hot beats”) and places his newness as the logical, joyous consequence of a vibrant, active tradition (“Livin’ revolutionary! Nothin’ less than legendary!”). Acknowledging his “extraordinary swag” he too absorbs himself back into the song’s ether, but still checking to see if you’ve hung on for the whole story (“OK, yeah, that’s right” he responds to M.I.A.’s calls. “So you notice the song, huh?” “Tell ‘em for me, Shawty!”). And so, with a final fusillade, a last machine gun run of M.I.A. swagga juice, the song echoes out, expanding to fill the entire universe.

Even in a year as fecund as 2008, T.I.’s Paper Trail album stands out – it’s so 1982 in its own ways that it also manages to be 2022 – and everyone involved, from Rihanna and Timberlake on down, sound as though they have had no choice but to exceed themselves. The gusty “hey!”s propelling Rihanna’s jewel of an encased liberated voice on “Live Your Life” are sufficient to power the universe (I think of “Blow High, Blow Low” from Oklahoma! times 10 to the power of forever). The closing threnody of “Dead And Gone” (one of Justin’s best performances to date) according to Lena – and I totally agree - occasions the application of the adjective “beautiful,” a term seldom applied to hip hop The beauty and serene swiftness of the best of 2008’s music is worthy of worship and “Swagga Like Us” – a “Four Brothers” rewritten by James Baldwin for our age – forms a more than worthy temple. These are the days, my friends.