Gomez and Eve
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13 September 1999
Gomez
Liquid Skin
Part two of the Merseyside indie band’s career overture, Liquid Skin shared the textural nuances of Gomez’s Mercury Prize-winning debut Bring It On. Indeed, the albums were almost twins, down to the implied diptych of their cover art—Liquid Skin even inherited Bring It On‘s discarded title track, a bluesy fugue that became a top-25 single in the UK. But it ultimately outstrips its older sibling in both ambition and in the polished grit of its neo-blues confabulations.
For certain, it features more glorious uvula-scraping sustained notes from Ben Ottewell’s burnt-copper pipes than any other Gomez release: the sitar-drenched “Hangover” begins with his potent entreaty to “be the light at my window”, “Blue Moon Rising” climaxes with explosive iterations of the title phrase, and “Rosalita” bears out his vocal dexterity for its entire length. The songwriting and production remains solid throughout (“Rhythm & Blues Alibi” could well be the band’s theme song), but it’s the rambling splendor of “California” and “Devil Will Ride” that sees Liquid Skin pull ahead of its well-laurelled predecessor. The latter in particular takes the cake, with its gobsmacking vocoder effects, marching-band horns, and Beatle-esque sing-along fadeout. “Even the Royal Mail / Can’t deliver us from what we got into”, Ian Ball sings. But on Liquid Skin, Gomez evades the sophomore jinx and convincingly delivers. 
Ross Langager
14 September 1999
Eve
Let There Be Eve… Ruff Ryders’ First Lady
Our nostalgic trip down memory lane would be incomplete without recognizing one of 1999’s brightest stars: Eve Jihan Jeffers. Carving out a space for herself in the male-dominated world of hip-hop, Eve achieved commercial success and critical acclaim with her debut, Let There Be Eve… Ruff Ryders’ First Lady. Sensual yet devoid of the hyper-sexuality that plagued the careers of more than a few of her female contemporaries, Eve appealed to young and old, female and male, the converted and the unconverted. Amazingly, in a black cultural universe increasingly fragmented along the lines of rhythm and bullshit (see: Mark Anthony Neal), neo-soul, commercial rap, and backpacker hip-hop, Eve possessed the rare ability to endear herself to disparate communities.
Nowhere was this more apparent than on her debut release. Unafraid to signify with and on her hip-hop brethren, Eve shares the mic with rap’s man of the hour, DMX, her Philly comrade Beanie Sigel, and fellow newcomer Drag-On. Certain to oblige the most rudimentary requirements of hip-hop, the talented rapper from the City of Brotherly Love states her claim as the baddest chick in the game (“Scenario”), pays homage to her hometown (“Philly, Philly”), and tackles the complex subject of relations between the sexes (“Let’s Talk About” and “Gotta Man”). To her credit, Eve gives voice to women struggling with issues of self-esteem and caught in abusive relationships. It seems only fitting in a milieu in which black music tilted toward a more conscious stance that Eve’s biggest single would address the issue of domestic violence. “Love Is Blind”, produced by Kasseem “Swizz Beats” Dean and featuring soulful vocals from Faith Evans, raced up the charts, due in no small part to its accompanying video.
Opening with “I don’t even know you and I hate you”, Eve told the story of the havoc domestic violence reeks on the lives of its victims and the communities they inhabit. On this track and others, Eve revealed a layer of black femininity that differed from that associated with neo-soul’s Earth Mamas. As cultural critic Greg Tate astutely noted, Eve put forth a vision of “inner-city sisterhood that may be understandably lost on folk all caught up in her platinum blond, butch haircut, pouty lips, and breast-stalking paw prints.” Coming out the same year as Me’Shell Ndegeocello’s masterful Bitter, Angie Stone’s underrated Diamonds, and Mary J. Blige’s beautiful Mary, Eve was one of many artists providing a thought-provoking take on the complexity of black womanhood at the turn of the 21st century. Claudrena Harold
