Screamadelica
Primal Scream (1991)
For the two albums that came before Screamadelica, Primal Scream were just another fey and jangly Scottish indie band. Enter DJ and producer Andrew Weatherall, who harnessed Bobby Gillespie and co’s interest in London’s buzzing late-80s acid house scene and helped turn it into a euphoric, hedonistic and era-defining record. Loaded is the hit, Slip Inside This House the inspired cover version and Don’t Fight It, Feel It the definitive instruction on how to do ecstasy-inspired raving properly.
Spice
Spice Girls (1996)
A short list of people who grew up listening to the Spice Girls: Little Mix, Charli XCX, Katy Perry, Adele. And Spice was the wildly enthusiastic in-yer-face dance-pop record that – thanks to enormohits Wannabe, Say You’ll Be There and Who Do You Think You Are – launched Ginger, Posh, Scary, Sporty, Baby and the “girl power” slogan into the mainstream quicker than you could say “zig-a-zig-ah”.
Mezzanine
Massive Attack (1998)
Deep, dark, doomy and graceful, Mezzanine is trip-hop’s crowning glory. Teardrop is the most famous track, but Inertia Creeps, Risingson and Angel are just as harrowingly atmospheric. Made at a time when the mood within the Bristol band was terse, Massive Attack’s third album pongs of alienation, isolation and fear, and the trio became a duo shortly after the release when Andrew Vowles, aka Mushroom, jumped ship (or was pushed off).
Original Pirate Material
The Streets (2002)
On which 23-year-old Birmingham boy Mike Skinner takes the sound of two-step UK garage and decorates it with often funny, frequently poignant and always relatable raps about, as he puts it on Has It Come to This?, a “day in the life of a geezer”. Booze, drugs, clubs, pubs, PlayStations, heartbreak, the quantity of fried tomato a fry-up requires – it’s all on there, still sounding fresh. Put on your classics and have a little dance.
Boy in Da Corner
Dizzee Rascal (2003)
Until the release of Skepta’s Konnichiwa in 2016, Dizzee Rascal’s Boy in Da Corner was the grime album. Released when the genre was still relatively young, it’s a frighteningly raw and angry take on the realities of growing up as a working-class kid in east London. Looking at the artist Dizzee has become, it’s hard to remember the shy teenager who raps so furiously about knife crime (Stop Dat), underage sex (I Luv U) and everyday violence (Seems 2 Be) over ice-cold beats that reflect the hopelessness of his situation. But he’s there, and he’s a genius.
Arular
MIA (2005)
There’s a lot to get your head round on the debut album from the London via Sri Lanka rapper. The title: MIA’s dad’s codename when he was in the Tamil Tiger militant group, given to the record in the hope he would one day Google himself and see what his daughter had made (he did). The sound: multicultural trans-global party music that nicks bits from all over the world, most notably hip-hop and dancehall. The lyrics: explorations of politics, culture, food, sex, war and revolution. Truly invigorating.
xx
The xx (2009)
Listen to this debut album now, and you might think you’ve heard it all before. But none of London Grammar, Banks, Alt-J, Lorde or James Blake sounded like that before xx. Really, the only band that sounded remotely like the xx before the xx were late-70s Welsh post-punks Young Marble Giants. But the genius of the London band’s update on YMG’s minimal guitar sound is the use of cutting-edge production to create 11 spooky mini-epics that tell late-night tales of love, lust and longing.
Let England Shake
PJ Harvey (2011)
From the moment she announced Let England Shake on the Andrew Marr Show in April 2010, telling the presenter: “My biggest fear would be to replicate something I’ve done before”, you knew Polly Jean Harvey’s eighth album would be special. Suspicions were confirmed when, 10 months later, an ambitious portrayal of the horrors of world war one and its aftermath appeared, featuring lyrics about soldiers falling “like lumps of meat” (The Words That Maketh Murder) and a country whose “fruit is deformed children” (The Glorious Land) in songs that took in folk, rock and pop, mostly made with guitars but with dashes of harp and sax in there too. PJ wasn’t done there though, and asked war photographer Seamus Murphy to make a video for every track to complete a fantastically creative vision.
LP1
FKA Twigs (2014)
Four years since Tahlia Barnett released her debut album, there’s still nothing quite like it. In a way it’s doomy alt-R&B but just like, say, Bjork in her pomp, there are so many risks, ideas and moods on LP1 it would be unfair to label it. There are sad songs (Pendulum), sexy songs (Two Weeks), romantic songs (Hours) and vulnerable songs (Closer), a mega list of producers (Clams Casino, Sampha, Twigs herself and more) and a whole load of vocal experimentation. Yet it comes together because FKA Twigs, alien pop star extraordinaire, is right at the heart of all of it.
Common Sense
J Hus (2017)
The way J Hus’s debut brings together grime, garage, bashment, dancehall, afrobeat and early 00s hip-hop is as exciting as British music gets. Tunes like Bouff Daddy, Did You See and the title track are carnivals of ideas, and the east Londoner is comfortable rapping sensitively, playfully or aggressively over any style he’s given. The focus, though, is always on his extraordinary life that’s featured a multiple stabbing. It’s the unique sound of modern multicultural London.
