Tricky (w/ DJ Muggs and Grease)
Juxtapose
Island

Say one thing about Tricky, he has a way with naming his albums. No artist is better at abstractly titling his music.

Take, Pre-Millennium Tension, which pointed two squinted eyes at the ticking clock of the end of the 20th century. Or, Angels with Dirty Faces, a mere deification of Tricky's style. Beautifully symphonic one minute, and grindingly off kilter the next. Or Nearly God, Tricky might argue that his music is Nearly God, but is there a more self-important artist working today? (Sorry Goldie, but the Tricky Kid nips you at the wire). Time and time again, the title's the descriptor.

Juxtapose stays the course. It brings together all the pieces that make Tricky's albums both infinitely interesting and maddeningly inconsistent. The female crooners, the slightly jungly beats, the hip-hop influence, the somewhat (gasp!) pop sensibility; it's all here. The inclusion of DJ Muggs, best known for his work with Cypress Hill, leads the listener to think Tricky has finally been swallowed by the Hip Hop World, but that is simply not the case. The two tracks to which Muggs lends a hand, "Call Me" and "Wash My Soul," are two of the album's least hip-hop songs. The beautiful "Call Me" rolls forward on D'Na's tempered vocals, while the churning, spoken-word "Wash My Soul" sounds as if Tricky has just run around the block after two bong loads and is trying to catch his breath by praying for forgiveness.

Producer Dame Grease's addition is just the opposite of Muggs' non-hopness. The East Cost hip hop producer, known for his work with top dog DMX and The Lox, beats up five of the ten tracks, and not surprisingly these are the record's most hip-hop based songs. They recall Tricky's Grassroots, except with guest rapper Mad Dog adding the rhyme to Tricky's breathy impending personal injury warnings. Mad Dog's flow (and Tricky's, for that matter, on "Bom Bom Diggy") smacks of Mad Dog impersonating Notorious B.I.G. impersonating Bone Thugs-n-Harmony on B.I.G.'s Notorious Thugs. That is to say a tongue twisting delivery with somewhat less than an intelligible success, but at least it's interesting — something too many American MCs are not these days.

It is always going to be a struggle to fully embrace Tricky's music, and that's not surprisingly the case with Juxtapose. There are just too many off moments where the intention is good but the product is flawed. Neither better nor worse than the work that has come before it Juxtapose will ring true for fans and fall on deaf ears of the masses. Probably just the way Tricky likes it. All he wanted from music on Massive Attack's Blue Lines was an auto anyway, right?

— Erik Olson (eo999 at hotmail dot com)