In September 2001 I was given a pass that got me free entry into a club in Newcastle where I was living at the time on it's rap and R&B night. Unfortunately I didn't get to use it because most of my friends in Newcastle were into indie music so being in the minority meant I was joining them at the indie club rather than them joining me at a rap & R&B one.
We have a similar number of indie records entering the Top 40 in September as we do rap and R&B but the latter is only slightly better in terms of quality.
Indie wise I like "Bliss" by Muse which I wasn't expecting and also like "Let Robeson Sing" by the Manic Street Preachers. I also thought that "FEAR" by Ian Brown was alright. I can't remember if I heard any of these at the indie club or not.
Onto the rap, we have drum & bass DJ Adam F entering the rap world with Redman with "Smash Sumthin'" which is good. We have Ludacris and Nate Dogg with "Area Codes" which was very much one I was enjoying at the time.
The best record though is a rapper with a non-rap single which was his only UK Top 40 hit. That was "Follow Me" by Uncle Kracker, the DJ for Kid Rock going solo. If you listen to his "Double Wide" album pretty much all the other tracks are rap and I'm sure some people were taken by surprise about that.
Nelly Furtado had her 2nd Top 40 hit with "Turn Out The Light" which is good. Artful Dodger were known for doing garage but their album had an R&B track called "Twenty Four Seven" which they released as a single with a different vocalist. Again it's full marks.
Speaking of garage we have a decent record from DJ Luck & MC Neat with "I'm All About You". The other ones come from Ed Case & Sweetie Irie with "Who" and Maxwell D with "Serious" which both fall into the contributed to the demise of garage category.
Dance music is the most prolific genre this month and the quality once again is a mixed bag. For trance we are saying instrumental trance is good and vocal trance is crap. There is a really good vocal house record though in "Finally" by Kings of Tomorrow.
Onto the worst record then which goes to Little Trees with "Help I'm A Fish". Normally I have a bit of lenience when a record is clearly intended to be crap, but this is so bad it just has to be the worst record.
Here's a list of the records with the best on top, worst at the bottom and the good ones in green, OK ones in amber and rubbish ones in red (and in no particular order):
Here's a look at the chart:
What we can say is that 2001 has a better September. October, November and December than those months in the years that followed.
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