Periodic Tricky appreciation thread

[MiketheangrydrunkenCUfan]

So I've been slowly loading my entire CD collection onto iTunes, and I'm in the home stretch (less than 150 CDs to go - woo hoo!). I was loading up some Tricky tonight and I realized that I'd forgotten how great Tricky was for a couple years there in the latter half of the '90s.

That period right after grunge crashed and burned was kind of interesting. You had Tool and Radiohead exploring opposite ends of the prog rock spectrum, everyone had a boner for "electronica" (I don't ever think we got a clear definition of what, exactly, that term meant), and the biggest thing in underground rap was a couple of admittedly talent-deficient white dudes from Detroit who wore clown makeup and rapped about eating dead bodies.

Enter Tricky: lazy beats, super mellow vibe, but just enough street cred and British weirdness to keep things interesting. Tricky sounded like what you'd put on to calm the nerves after a particularly harrowing drive-by if you were a straight-up gangsta instead of a nerdy white guy from the Midwest.

Maxinquaye was probably his tour de force, but Pre-Millennium Tension and the Nearly God album aren't far behind. Even his 2001 "comeback" album, Blowback, had some really strong moments. Tricky spurred a whole "trip-hop" binge for me that resulted in some really good finds (Portishead, Morcheeba) and some significantly less memorable purchases (Hooverphonic, 12 Rounds, Tranquility Bass). The new Portishead record sucks ass, BTW.

So, has anybody else forgotten that they really, really dig Tricky?

[King Crimson]

i like Tricky, got some live stuff in a folder somewhere on one of my drives. DJ Spooky is pretty cool, too.