Tricky

After squinting into the glare of nightlife notoriety for more than half a decade as an adjunct member of Bristol, England, beatmongers Massive Attack, Tricky took a deep huff and released his brilliant debut Maxinquaye, a long, distorted shadow of utopian '90s club culture that draws from the techno, hip-hop, and rock underground.

The soundtrack to a morning after in which the sun never rises, Maxinquaye coughs up disjointed sonic details like so much technicolor phlegm -- an echoed dockside clang, a hyper piano tinkle, sluggish funk guitar scrapes. Sometimes Tricky rasp-raps, often he cedes the mike to ladies, particularly the imperturbably deviant Martina Topley-Bird, who claims Public Enemy's "Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos" as her own and declares "I'll drink till I'm drunk/And I'll smoke till I'm senseless." Descending into this garish, ominous, and self-aware soundscape is like watching a Disney cartoon on bad acid, itching with fear even as you retain the sense that it's all an illusion.

Critics bestowed the term trip-hop on Tricky's pallid imitators, who often unimaginatively propped a blank thrush atop a moody beat -- a trick he promptly one-upped by cannily producing a series of women (Björk, Alison Moyet, Neneh Cherry) on the chilly Nearly God. After that, the wizened imp became a virtuoso of self-imitation: Each time he repeated himself, his tracks constricted further, reveling in their claustrophobia. Though the work retained its power, many listeners lost interest -- what kind of pop masochist deliberately seeks out a hangover? That was a shame, because Tricky was compiling the catchiest, most discrete songs of his career. Featuring cameos from guests as prominent and varied as Alanis Morissette and the Red Hot Chili Peppers, BlowBack is an eerie facsimile of a pop record, a collection of smash hits for an alternate reality. Vulnerable is business-as-usual Tricky, spotlighting guest-diva vocals and tweaked covers (XTC's "Dear God," The Cure's "Love Cats") that don't seem so special anymore. (KEITH HARRIS)

From 2004's The New Rolling Stone Album Guide