...Dizzee Rascal's Boy in Da Corner? It's not just that it's as good as all those Moonies who went crazy over it said it was back when it came out; listening to it this morning, in a time when the notion of the masterpiece has been (thank God) somewhat marginalized, it sounds like, ahem, scuffle scuffle, dunno how to say this, but...it sounds like a fucking masterpiece. It's the use of space that's getting me today, which is weird, because I remember feeling penned-in the first time I heard it: like there was nowhere to turn, no way to get free. This was (and is) why I preferred Showtime, which was lots more fun than Boy and which did the right thing by not just claiming dance turf through a series of dizzyingly complex signifiers but by making it glaringly obvious: you can dance to this. Today, though, Boy seems to waft cool air across the room - I hear wind blowing, almost - it's like the night sky. The only track that still word-associations stuff like "claustrophobic" out of me is, oddly, "Jus' A Rascal," the funniest track on the album, which begins with a huge open riff but cuts off the ring gradually 'til at the end there's just you and a frothing nineteen-year-old listening to his answering machine messages.