Basement Jaxx

Rooty was quite possibly the best thing the dancefloor had to offer in 2001. The duo broke away from the underground House scene with the in-your-face live vocals of "Romeo" and "Where's Your Head At." Surprisingly, the latter received radio play on hard rock stations worldwide.

Even as pop music gets more bleepy and hip-hop more digital, many house- and
techno-music aesthetes are engaged in bringing dance music out of the underground and
onto the radio. For the U.K.'s Basement Jaxx, "pop" and "funk" are very elastic concepts;
with Rooty they fine-tune their classy thump into a pop-house hybrid that owes something
to a little guy named Prince. It isn't that their tracks sound like him (except for th... More >

I wish they'd hire human singers. Cyborgs can grate on the ears, and I bet they don't suck dick that good either. Still, no catchier collection of jingles has come to my attention since Steve Miller made his mint off jet airliners. So though I know it's dance music, that's not how I hear it. A*Teens my a-hole, this is the real Europop--such as it is. (Grade - A-)