So, you're a founding member of the legendary hip-hip combo Wu Tang Clan. And your fans are extremely pissed because you went and done a track with that Justin Bieber.

And what illuminating revelation do we learn from the half conceived, cottonmouthed rubbish that constitutes ‘Democrazy’? In full: ‘thank Christ Blur usually finish writing their songs before they sell them, otherwise they’d be shit’.

Musically, they’ve ripped off swathes of things contemporary and popular to make them ‘hip’, but it just feels like some dodgy old guy at a bus stop telling you he digs Klaxons.

Needless to say, it's totally fucking rubbish.

Talk about a fall from grace. [4 Jun 2005, p.58]

Margins though, is mawkish and self-indulgent to the last, a wet weekend of a record, drably trudging through inelegant, wannabe-Mike Leigh vignettes into Smith's failed relationship.

And Then Boom is the moment the ironic ’80s electro revival finally manages to jump the shark.

Stultifying moroseness and a constant furrowing of the brow permeate from start to finish. [21 Aug 2004, p.49]

Ineffectual hippy grumblings that will make you want to sleep. [4 Jun 2005, p.58]

Cardiology is monstrously offensive – the latest shit-streak by music's laziest sons.

The Christmas album can risk being a sonic Round Robin, of interest to few but its creators, dispossessed of all perspective as they've mired themselves deep in their icky, cosy world.

Toe-curlingly unlistenable. [4 Sep 2004, p.73]

[He] returns with exactly the same sound he's been torturing us with for years. [9 Jul 2005, p.58]

It's just nothing. Complete plastic nothingness from the outset.

They need to retire. NOW.

It’s actually Dire Straits gone trip-hop and everyone involved... should be brutally beaten to death with a tray of Ferrero Rocher.

You'll find nothing more despicable this year. [17 Sep 2005, p.58]

The album itself consists of 11 tracks of unimaginative pub rock that, at best, rips off The Darkness, and at worst comes across like a bunch of teenagers in their first band.

It's difficult to believe Limp Bizkit could return after all this time somehow even more hateful than before.

'Lions' is widdle-smothered great-grandadrock shite that Hendrix could whack off in ten minutes today, despite being dead. Pumped full of funk-rawk formaldehyde to stop the choruses dropping off, it boasts all the originality of a cloned baked bean and about as many tunes as a tractor makes trying to get out of a ditch.

Ireton’s voice has an unschooled grace which elevates ‘Hiding Neath My Umbrella’ to the status of an interesting, if flimsy, curio in Murdoch’s canon. It’s just a shame the rest of the record, and the new recruits, are so fucking woeful.

Despite Cee Lo's vocal guidance (Brixton Briefcase), you almost black out from the terribleness before coming to and realising you're too good for this soulless nonsense.

This album is a tribute to enduring a profoundly underwhelming pop star existence. The banality could be forgiven if it included even one decent hook but alas, no.

[A] perplexing and risible album.

Suit represents Nelly going smooth and seductive for an entire LP, and it is about 9,000 times as bad as that sounds. [2 Oct 2004, p.63]

At its best, this is the sound of Captain Tofuheart; at worst -- on 'Elegy' -- it is literally an out-of-tune dirge. [29 Apr 2006, p.39]

3OH!3 are electro-hip-pop white bread American scum.

The Hacker is still a dab hand at dark electro, his rich, chewy tracks bubbling like molasses in a cauldron; Miss Kittin still veers close to self-parody.