Panjabi MC

In summer 2003 it looked like the U.K. remix/bhangra scene was poised to break stateside: Jay-Z's remix of Panjabi MC's "Beware the Boys" was required summer dance music, and Punjabi music suddenly had a whole new fan base. Well, the deluge never happened, but PMC got to release this rad album. Old faves like "Ghalla Gurian" and "Mirza" + newbies like "Jogi" = all good.

The phrase "world music" gets thrown at everything from Nigerian grooves to the Buena
Vista Social Club -- maybe that's because we Americans think our pop is the norm and that
everything else is exotic. But Panjabi MC, also known as the English bhangra DJ Rajinder
Rai, sees things differently. For him, his music -- a spinning mix of Indian traditional song and
fresh beats -- is the norm, and hip-hop is world music. Jay-Z, who first heard Pan... More >

It's 1967, you just ripped the cellophane off an Elmore James album, and for a while there you hardly know what hit you. Not until track three or four do you begin wondering whether the material is all aces, the singing everything you'd hoped. Only then, wham, up pops "Dust My Broom" or one of its cousins again. That's how it is with the best bhangra album ever to come my way. Not that the filler's just filler. Rajinder Rai knows there are more hooks and vocal flavors where "Mundian To Bach Ke" came from, and if none of them spells follow-up in God Bless Xenophobia, they'll keep interested parties going. Nevertheless, this album begins where it ends because a genre has found its signature riff. I love Rajinder Rai's version. I love Jay-Z's version. When Linkin Park does a version I'll dig that too. (Grade - A-)