Kiss Jams

After the surprise enjoyment of Kiss' Smooth Grooves 98, when I found this release sitting in my charity shop's "clearance" bin I thought I'd take another dip into these tie-in compilations with the famous UK pirate-turned-FM radio station Kiss.

Kiss Jams comes a few years after Smooth Grooves 98, and is from the Universal Music TV label not Polygram TV (if that matters at all). A quick glance on the rear of the inlay and I had seen some recognizable performers that fit into the R&B/Hip-Hop genre (or the dreaded "urban" category) along with a few I didn't recognize. Hoping to discover some gems that I may have missed out on, I popped the CDs into my playing device that evening to be slightly disappointed by what I got.

Ultimately my dissapointment didn't come from the tracks that I recongized immediately, and have covered in my library by either original artist albums or other compilations released in 2004, but from the tracks I didn't recognize. While updating the entry in MusicBrainz it became clear that this double CD release has quite a number of tracks from "home-grown" talent (i.e. UK acts) such as Shystie, Estelle, Naila Boss, Zena, 2Play, FYA and Jayme. However with the exception of The Pirates "You Should Really Know" (which features the Fugee's famous sample of Enya's Boadicea giving it a good head start) and Shystie's "One Wish", the rest of the home-grown talent here just pales in comparison to the output of the American performances here.

Maybe if the compilation was more focused, or the CD's were themed (UK vs USA), then it wouldn't feel like such a downhill race from Track 1, but by the time you're at track 19 on either side you're already reaching for the Next Track button to get you back to the start, which is ultimately populated by mostly popular American acts.

All in, unless you have a big gap for 2004's most popular R&B/Hip-Hop tracks you can probably give this compilation a miss.