2002 was a good year for R&B and hip-hop but only if you shunned commercial radio, corporate music magazines, MTV, BET and all other mainstream media hype-dolloping outlets. If you sought good music on your own, there was a nice bounty there for the taking. 1. The Neptunes ruled the…

There’s something admirable in Darius Rucker’s mission to prove he’s more than the Dylan of the frat-boy generation. After years as the darker-skinned front man of the otherwise vanilla party band Hootie and the Blowfish, Rucker is branching out. With the release of his solo debut, Back to Then, he’s…

Pink wants everyone to know that she isn’t Britney Spears. She’ll yell it from the rooftops. She’ll tattoo it on her washboard midriff. She’ll hold a high school principal hostage just so she can scream it over the intercom during morning announcements. She’ll even sing it. Her latest album, M!ssundaztood,…

We may never get back the true Mystikal, the real Mystikal, the Mystikal who put his skills on the table first, then looked around for some well-deserved ass. That was the Mystikal of “Y’all Ain’t Ready Yet,” and indeed we weren’t. When the New Orleans rapper dropped that single in…

You ever notice that it’s much more fun to talk about Britney Spears than to listen to her? As an artist (and that term is used very loosely), she gives audiences banal, dry, teen pop and gussies it up with a shiny, enticing sheen — the musical equivalent of slathering…