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A message from your friend Beetar BEETARSTA™ ...Presents: THA BEST ALBUM OF THA MîLLENîUM...........checcc-ths-out! BEETARSTA™

Listen Up! Best Music of the Millennium … So Far by Wired: Underwire previous image | next image In a decade fueled by hyperconsumption and paranoia, some musicians stood out by balancing cultural relevance, technological innovation and raw lyrical and sonic power. These artists and their recordings — the best of the millennium so far — significantly upped the ante in their respective genres of rock, pop, hip-hop and beyond (usually by obliterating those labels). These musicians’ beautiful noise will only grow louder as the next decade unfurls. Listen to top tracks by the standard-bearers below, then let us know your choices for the ’00s finest music in the comments section. El-P: Fantastic Damage (2002), I’ll Sleep When You’re Dead (2007) It’s apropos that El-P is pictured above in front of what looks like a lie detector, because he’s rock and hip-hop’s eminent truth-teller. His apocalyptic twin missiles Fantastic Damage and I’ll Sleep When You’re Dead may have flown beneath hip-hop’s hopelessly distracted mainstream, but that’s only because their personal and political pain was too much to bear for hearts and minds that sold their souls to the twin hallucinations of reality TV and the war on terror. Songs on both efforts mashed the political and cultural madness of the decade with sci-fi standouts like Star Trek, THX-1138 and Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer (in “Deep Space 9mm” at right). El-P’s labyrinthine rhymes were backed by beats fed through two Technics, an Ensoniq sampling keyboard, one Vestax mixer, a Korg Chaoss Pad and more comparatively lo-fi recording tech. His profile escalated sharply on I’ll Sleep When You’re Dead, in the form of a kinetic beat upgrade and cameos from Trent Reznor (in “Flyentology” at right), Cat Power and other all-stars. But even that abrasive classic unsettled more soma-sniffing hip-hop heads than it awakened upon its release in 2007. “I’m more interested in saying something that will mean something,” the former Company Flow member told Wired.com. The group’s stunning debut Funcrusher Plus was reissued earlier this year. “My solo work made sense of the inevitable Third World War. Which is why I ended up bringing more of who I was into the picture, and became more influenced by matters of the heart and head.” In the end, it was El-P’s decision to abandon the music industry and form the respected indie label Definitive Jux in 1999, setting the stage for his brilliant bow as the finest hip-hop artist of the ’00s. From its slew of releases from intelligent, talented hip-hop artists like RJD2, Aesop Rock, Mr. Lif and Rob Sonic to team-ups with television tastemakers like Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim, Def Jux turned out some of the most potent artistic work of the ’00s. Through it all, El-P churned out the best hip-hop of our still-new millennium, and raised the stakes for electronic music speaking truth to power and paranoia. Tell a friend. Image courtesy Def Jux Read full story