Label - Sub Pop

Roll up, roll up. Welcome to Nirvana's Greatest Hits, you know the band that changed the face of modern rock music. All your favourites are here, and there's a new track too ("You Know You're Right"), conveniently placed in pole position.

Their debut Bleach is criminally under-represented, with only "About A Girl" making an appearance.Then we get "Been A Son" and "Sliver" from the interim sessions prior to Nevermind, before coming across most of the first side of that classic album ("Smells Like Teen Spirit", "Come As You Are", "Lithium" and "In Bloom" all storming songs which remind the listener exactly why Nirvana broke the alt-rock mould).

The next section comprises a selection from Nirvana's swan song, In Utero."Heart Shaped Box", "Pennyroyal Tea" and "Rape Me" are still wonderful, visceral songs, but it's "All Apologies" which really tugs at the heartstrings.We finish up with two numbers from the MTV Unplugged session -covers of Leadbelly's "Where Did You Sleep Last Night" and Bowie's "The Man Who Sold The World".The latter makes for particularly difficult listening in retrospect, with Cobain's tortured voice insisting that "we never lost control".Less than six months later he committed suicide.

Of course, the main reason most Nirvana fans will buy this record is the only new track on the album, "You Know You're Right". While the initial impact of "Smells Like Teen Spirit" is almost impossible to eclipse (remember where you were the first time you heard that intro and those chords?), for most aficionados of the Seattle Trio it was a veritable shiver-down-the-spine moment when "You Know You're Right" first came on the radio.A rave from the grave.A poignant reminder of what might have been. An almost unbearable sense of bathos.Listening to a dead man snarling out his last gasp of righteous sarcasm.

Who these barbed lyrics are directed towards is a matter of debate.The fact that the remaining members of Nirvana have been locked in litigation with Cobain's widow regarding the release of a box set of both old and unreleased material for over two years may be neither here nor there. One can only wonder what the notoriously cynical and anti-corporate Kurt would have made of it all.

"I am married...buried...All we are is all we are"

Nuff said. – Amy Mcauliffe, BBC 2002

“"Born on a Gangster Star" flirts with a pop sensibility, but through the prism of Shabazz Palaces’s fire and fury. For the Palaceer, that sense is all about how the groove is moving, and the supernatural telepathy that occurs amongst his cohort. Appearing here, in body or in spirit, are Julian Casablancas, Thundercat, Darrius Willrich, Gamble and Huff, Loud Eyes Lou, Thaddillac, Ahmir, Jon Kirby, Sunny Levine, and Blood. The story belongs to Quazarz, but the air and darkness belong to us.” – Bandcamp

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Ishmael Butler and Tendai “Baba” Maraire of Shabazz Palaces have always been proud iconoclasts, consistently breaking ground in spaces once thought incompatible with hip-hop. They were among the few rap acts signed to Sub Pop; they were pretty much the only rap artists to ever perform at the avant-garde Big Ears festival in Knoxville. This adventurous spirit continues down the Butler family line with Ishmael’s son Jazz, aka Lil Tracy. It seems that Jazz’s work has had a profound effect on his father’s project; in recent interviews, Butler cites his own son as an influence.

As one of the original members of the GothBoiClique, Tracy is an important figure in the development of “emo rap,” and what’s fascinating about Shabazz’s new album The Don of Diamond Dreams is the degree to which Ish seems to be learning from the new generation. Like polarizing label mates clipping., Shabazz’s brand of “alternative” hip-hop is not so much opposed to the mainstream as it is reflective of it, absorbing tangents of influence from trap, Auto-Tuned R&B, chopped and screwed, and other variants. Their lyrics are often shaped by the hip-hop hegemony too, playing off Rap Caviar tropes and taunting the Top 40 with a tongue-in-cheek braggadociousness, the kind that lets you know that Butler is still the same MC who told us he was cool like that all those years ago.– Pitchfork