Year In Review: 1993
The one exceptional new act was in hip hop: the lyrically hallucinatory,
larger than life Wu-Tang Clan.
Power-poppers The Posies helped erase the bad name
Seattle rock had earned, and other rockers also went retro, from
Australia's Midnight Oil to Japan's jokey
Shonen Knife.
Diana Ross trying to
sing jazz wasn't a shock - that the results were sincere and tasteful
was. More predictably, Brenda Russell fine-tuned her gentle
soul/funk.
George Clinton treated
P-Funk fans to a monster four-CD live set spanning two decades.
And the year's best record was a B-sides compilation: disc
three of Prince's greatest hits.
There were duds aplenty, from artists of all eras: 70s stars did
particularly poorly, with dull efforts from Deborah Harry, Elton John, and Elvis Costello.
Yo Yo traded her feminist message for boring beats and a smoking gun.
60s
holdover David Crosby didn't have
much to say on his Thousand
Roads, and an attempt at reviving old school funk by a
collection of P-Funk alumni, O.G. Funk's Out Of The Dark, just didn't cut it.
The Latin album of the year was NG La Banda's effortlessly varied Cabaret Panoramico; best
jazz album was Steve Coleman's Drop
Kick. (DBW)
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