Ruby Vroom
Where the '60s had a fair amount of great blue-eyed soul, the 1990s had been remiss in offering up first-rate, blue-eyed hip-hop--until Soul Coughing came along. Frontman M. Doughty shied away from the label, dubbing the quartet's music "deep slacker jazz," which actually kinda fits tracks like the film noir homage, "Screenwriter's Blues." Doughty's acerbic, often hilarious (see "Casiotone Nation") rhymes--which never sound like he's trying to be too streetwise--float like butterflies over the sting-like-a-bee rhythm section of Sebastian Steinberg and Yuval Gabay. Add the unorthodox sampler technique of Mark de Gli Antoni, and you have a total package that you'll never tire of unwrapping.--David Sprague