Pop Music <BR>Giving 2002 a Final Spin: The Year's Tops and Flops<P>By David Segal<BR>Washington Post Staff Writer<P>It's Top 10 season. Here's mine.<P>Best CDs of the Year: <P>1. Eminem: "The Eminem Show" <P>"Hip-hop is in a state of 911," Eminem decrees early in "Show," and by the time this 77-minute diatribe of a CD is over, the guy has revived a patient that nobody realized was sick. The plot, to the extent that there is a plot, reads like a trailer-trash soap opera: Ornery prankster fumes at abusive mom, savages cold-blooded ex-wife and rails at haters, all the while feigning mental illness and, at one point, snorting cocaine in front of daughter. But Em made this "Jenny Jones" psychodrama fascinating. How? With words -- lots and lots of words -- some hilarious ("Without Me"), many bitter ("Cleanin' Out My Closet") and all of them tucked into somersaulting rhymes so dense that nuances still emerge on the fourth and fifth listens. He also goads parents and politicians, and he fends off charges of racial carpetbagging by beating critics to the punch ("I am the worst thing since Elvis Presley / to do black music so selfishly").<P>Producer Dr. Dre again provides the bare-minimum beats and a host of sound effects that function as one-liners. After "Show," the best-selling album of the year, and his star turn in the highly inoffensive film "8 Mile," Eminem can't play the pariah anymore. But maybe he'll discover something else to whine about and new ways to heap abuse on the Bush administration.<P>It would be empty without him.<P>2.Missy Elliott: "Under Construction" <P>"Work It," the hyper-hormonal single with the indecipherable chorus, isn't even the best dance track on Ms. E's brazenly X-rated fourth album. That honor belongs to "Slide," or possibly to "Gossip Folks," a funky slap at back-stabbing chatter. Timbaland, Missy's longtime producer, rifles through hip-hop's past for break-dance beats that bounce and thud and then bounce again. Elliott, meanwhile, does what she does best: boasts about her curves, crows about her conquests and seduces men with all the subtlety of an anvil dropped from the third story. Guest vocalists Jay-Z and Ludacris add testosterone, but neither can out-crass Lady M. and both end up seeming like wallflowers at a striptease.<P>Work it, Missy, work it. <P>3.The Black Heart Procession: "Amore del Tropico" <P>Love is a loaded gun with a faulty trigger on the unjustly overlooked fourth album by the San Diego band. With guitars, violins, cellos and a saw -- yes, a saw -- BHP makes regal, romantic music for the smitten and the smote, all of it at a sultry tempo that just draws out the heartache or doubles the rare moments of joy. "Broken World" is the tearjerker of 2002; lead singer Paulo Zappoli gives the chorus ("Now, we'll never meet again / Not in this broken world") a grief as real and wilting as the humidity in July. But even when shattered, Zappoli never sounds worn or hopeless. "Amore" makes love seem like a dangerous game that is always worth playing. <P>4. Citizen Cope: "Citizen Cope" <P>After a decade of local open-mike nights and low-profile gigging, Washington's own Citizen Cope -- known to mama and friends as Clarence Greenwood -- signs to a major label and makes the finest debut album of the year. Cope is a bohemian rhapsodizer of peace, love and understanding, a white man with a rhythm-and-blues heart and a folkie with the lungs and languid pacing of a wake-and-bake stoner. Good luck wedging songs like "Let the Drummer Kick" and "Teresa" into any category. Good luck, too, trying to resist them.<P>5. Clipse: "Lord Willin'" <P>Brothers Pusha T and Malice (born Gene and Terence Thornton) boast about their drug-dealing days in Virginia Beach so convincingly that their debut album could double as a courtroom confession. Admissible or not, "Lord" is evidence: of the Thorntons' wicked skills at turning crime into rhyme, and of the production talent of the Neptunes, the duo that created the music of "Lord." Tracks like "Young Boy" and "Gangsta Lean" are a speedball of blaxploitation grooves and canned beats, a combination so potent that it's a wonder no one thought of it before.<P>6. N*E*R*D, "In Search Of . . . " <P>Plenty of pop producers have attempted solo careers, and nearly all of them have ended in tears and reduced-for-clearance bins. But Pharrel Williams and Chad Hugo -- the Neptunes, as they're professionally known -- didn't just beat the odds, they trampled them. When they weren't escorting Britney, Jay-Z, Busta Rhymes, Clipse (see previous) and, most recently, Justin Timberlake up the charts, they created N*E*R*D, a trio with a fellow Virginia Beacher named Shay, and then recorded "Search." The album has the mechanical, snapping hooks that made "Slave for U" the only Britney tune an adult can love, but N*E*R*D used live drums instead of beats from a box. That gave the album, which alternates between prom-night tenderness and strip-club sleaze, an energy all its own. Not rap plus rock. Rap times rock. <P>7. Frank Black: "Black Letter Days" <P>The stronger of the two albums Black released in August, "Days" finds the former Pixies lead howler toned down to "Unplugged" volumes and adding country touches like pedal steel guitar. It starts and ends with different versions of Tom Waits's "The Black Rider." Sandwiched between are 16 songs about venomous ex-lovers ("Cold Heart of Stone"), unattainable objects of desire ("Jane the Queen of Love") and the pleasures of a walk in the woods ("Whispering Weeds"). The production in places is muted to a fault, and if you caught Black's show at the Black Cat a few weeks ago, you'll wish that on this CD he opened fire on these songs with similar uncorked abandon. But for pure songcraft, "Days" has punch -- and, if you turn it up loud enough, some kick, too.<P>8. Interpol: "Turn On the Bright Lights" <P>Wearing its influences on a well-tailored sleeve, Interpol gathers up threads of Smiths, swaths of Echo and the Bunnymen and a couple of square yards of the ultimate late-'70s doom rockers, Joy Division. These are British bands that peaked long ago, which makes them unlikely source material for a quartet based in Brooklyn. But "Bright Lights," the band's debut, isn't mere homage. Its bleakness is as stylized as the band's matching black suits, and Interpol's ambitions are pop enough to turn obscure lyrics like "Subway, she is a porno" into an art-rock chant.<P>9. The Sahara Hot Nights: "Jennie Bomb" <P>Swedish chicks! With guitars! Making hot-pants rock better than our homegrown hot-pants rock! SHN is modeled on America's favorite bird-flipping gal quartet, the Donnas. But listening to "Jennie Bomb," SHN's latest, is a little like shopping at Ikea. It makes you wonder: How did the Swedes beat us at a game we invented?<P>10. Ron Sexsmith: "Cobblestone Runway" <P>Too quiet? Too earnest? Too boyish? Too . . . Canadian? Fans of Ron Sexsmith -- a crowd that includes Elvis Costello, by the way -- are forever wondering why this 38-year-old singer-songwriter isn't more famous. "Cobblestone" only deepens the mystery. "Former Glory," the first track, is a serene, spirit-elevating lullaby that is hope rendered into melody, and even nonbelievers will find something cheering about "God Loves Everyone." If you're looking for irony, look elsewhere. Sexsmith is a comfort and "Cobblestone" is a joy.<P>Runners-up: Steve Earle, "Jerusalem"; the Greenhornes, "Dual Mono"; No Doubt, "Rock Steady"; Coldplay, "A Rush of Blood to the Head"; Nelly, "Nellyville"; Queens of the Stone Age, "Songs for the Deaf."<P>Most Baffling Critical Swoon: Beck, "Sea Change" <P>Heartbroken and in no mood for musical high jinks, Beck groaned his way through "Sea Change" with none of the winks, nods and fun-loving detachment that characterized his previous albums. Nothing wrong with some depressing folk-rock, but "Sea Change" is simply too dull to sustain its grief-stricken mood. "Sea" was nonetheless hailed in nearly every corner as Beck's finest, which is either a sign of collective amnesia or a gratuitous insult to 1996's "Odelay."<P>Runners-up: <P>The Vines: "Highly Evolved" <P>Bad Nirvana imitators with lead singer faking insanity, or pretending to be far drunker and more stoned than he actually is. Smells like teen scam.<P>Bruce Springsteen: "The Rising" <P>A well-intentioned misfire. Springsteen's hunger for a hit trumped his usually spot-on instinct for finding a sound that suits his songs. This album should have been as raw as the 9/11-related emotions it evoked. Instead, "Rising" has a satiny exterior and eager-to-please heart, which undermines its courage and dilutes its convictions. <P>Best Tribute Album: "Total Lee! The Songs of Lee Hazlewood" <P>Best known as the guy who discovered Duane Eddy and who wrote "These Boots Are Made for Walkin'," the Nancy Sinatra hit, Hazlewood is a pretty obscure figure for a full-length tribute. It's fitting, then, that the standouts on this sleeper are bands you've never heard of -- like Kid Loco (?) and Madrugada (??). As a bonus, the liner notes transcribe Hazlewood's out-loud ruminations -- a mix of amusement and horror -- as he hears these reinterpretations for the first time.<P>Best Show: The Hives at the Black Cat, June 15 <P>"I had a good time during the entire course of that song and so did you. If you didn't, you're a square -- and all squares go home now," said Hive-in-chief Pelle Almqvist early in this unforgettable little concert. Almqvist's Rock as a Second Language patter was just part of the fun. The rest was watching these uniform-wearing retro rockers from Sweden blast through a 47-minute set described by Almqvist as nothing less than a takeover of the U.S. government. He was joking, but a coup is a coup.<P>
