Busta stampedes through a survey of current rap styles with boundless wit, energy and quality rhymes. [Mar 2002, p.96]

Natalie Merchant has made an album of elemental beauty... she's never sounded better. [Jan 2002, p.140]

A vague air of missed opportunity hangs over this frustratingly short snapshot. [Dec 2001, p.124]

Knowing what she's capable of, it's impossible not to feel disappointed. [Feb 2002, p.120]

A hypnotic dream-map of astral drift and spac-age chamber music, textured jazztronica and technoid pulse. [Dec 2001, p.106]

Possibly a grower, this album is certainly better than anything Macca's done for some while. [Jan 2002, p.131]

Air and Zero 7 are perhaps the nearest reference points. [Dec 2001, p.106]

These cuts are fresh'n'funky with a strong Seventies soul influence. [Feb 2002, p.113]

A sublime suite of semi-ambient glitch-pop. [Dec 2001, p.106]

This eponymous effort does little to dispel the notion that he's a bit of a swaggering caricature. [Jan 2002, p.142]

Starts badly and gets worse for a very long time (77 minutes). [Jan 2002, p.146]

A far more ambitious affair as producers Black Dog and Custom Blue underpin her crystalline vocals with subtly pattering lite beats, clever jazz inflections and humming electronic textures. [Dec 2001, p.102]

The music remains a potent mix of stuttering party anthems and post-Biggie street sermons. [Feb 2002, p.114]

Slower than slow, softer than soft, the songs acquire an accumulative resonance. [Dec 2001, p.116]

Occasionally tentative songs and wonky arrangements mar them here. [Dec 2001, p.117]

If you thought they didn't make 'em like this anymore, here's the exception that proves the rule. [Feb 2002, p.112]

He still sounds like a blue-collar phoney trying to be a poor man's Springsteen. [May 2002, p.104]

The Argument showcases a band of uncommon power grappling with subtler shades as well as their quiet/loud, dub-influenced trademark sound. [Dec 2001, p.102]

The catchiest lesson in sexual politics you're likely to hear this season. [Dec 2001, p.111]

An American oddball, for sure, but one to treasure. [Jan 2002, p.146]

You have to adjust to its lack of ornamentation and let it settle, seep, uncurl like smoke or love. And there are songs here to equal his best. [Album Of The Month, Dec 2001, p.100]

Rule's raw, worn vocal recalls 2Pac, a style perfect for the title track's state-of-the-nation address but wasted on fodder like "Smokin' And Ridin.'" [Jan 2002, p.140]

Like Disney on methadone scored by Jack Nitzsche with a gun against his own head, trying to remember this soundtrack he once wanted to make, which teamed Judy Garland and Neil Young. [Album Of The Month] [Sept 2001, p.86]

Almost every tune sounds like a hit. [Dec 2001, p.108]

The DIY production can smother their delicate melodicism, and those parping horns can sound distinctly cheap and shrill. [Jan 2002, p.131]

Toxicity is virtually unlistenable: thrash metal splintered into a million pieces by unnecessary time changes, topped off with excruciatingly theatrical vocals. [Dec 2001, p.118]

Exceptional in its melodic prosperity and calculated grandeur. [Mar 2002, p.96]

Humorous, pithy and downright ballsy. [Sep 2001, p.106]