«Winehouse may seem like such a dedicated tearaway because the lens recording her movements is wider than anything a sixties celebrity would have encountered, doesn’t switch off, and continually feeds a twenty-four-hour newsstand. (...)

The central production conceit is in the voice, though; listen hard to Winehouse’s singing, and you will hear the odd combinations that make “Back to Black” more than skilled aping. (...) This style provides a way of singing derivations of black music without resembling modern R. & B. In fact, avoiding the sound of current R. & B. may be its guiding principle. (...) Listen to the mid-tempo shuffle “You Know I’m No Good” and hear how she elongates and deforms the word “worst.” Is she channelling a little-known blues singer? Is she hammered? This mush-mouthed approach is Winehouse’s real innovation—a mangling of language that will pull you in, especially when you want to hear the words.»

«In the early days however, [Ruff Sqwad's] strong point was their production rather than their MCing-- especially compared to peers Roll Deep's bars-- but on "Ruff Sqwad Mandem" you can hear a crew at their vocal peak, each verse tight and energetic. It's pure inertia. "When we write tunes, we aim to make people react to it, we look for a bop of the head or watch them dance around," explains Rapid. His comments are telling only because the majority of big tunes in grime have tended to try to engender a reload rather than work towards a groove.»

«(...) It is as if her lithe, dancer's body has been dressed by older, male hands, to suit their own fantasies. Amy Winehouse's wild, wilful self-destruction suddenly looks almost healthy. (...) Look at the video screens, and you can admire Rihanna's looks, and diamond-encrusted mic. Look at the stage, and her real performance has no charisma, no defining persona. She could be a mannequin, or a hopeful rap video extra.»

«Right now it's a common experience to go to commercial house clubs and unwittingly hear a half-dozen Freemasons tracks and remixes in the space of an hour. This monopoly is a simple consequence of supply and demand in commercial house music: as nearly every other major producer has embraced the hyperactive synth arpeggios and lumpen guitar riffs of electro-house, the Freemasons are almost alone in having kept faith with the larger-than-life disco-house sound that defined the genre at the beginning of the decade. Or at least, they're the only ones to have done so while still sounding interesting.»