Curse you, Kanye West. Not only did you make sped-up soul samples ubiquitous within rap, you made them so popular and radio-friendly that other rappers are starting to catch on to the world's chipmunk fetish and use them again and again. Fat Joe is a Bronx-based rapper who makes most of the chart-friendly crooners he gets played alongside seem as frail as Mr Burns by comparison, in both style and stature - he's a big, hard, angry bloke - and yet he opens his album with Intro, surely the result of a Three Degrees record being played at the wrong speed and a spare drum machine.

Thank goodness he later goes on to redeem himself immensely - the odd squeaky voice pops in here and there, but there's no doubt from the strength of this first long-player of his that he's fit to stand head and shoulders above most of the Bad Boy stable and on a level with the man he references frequently and considered his first inspiration, the sadly deceased Big Pun. Slowies like Listen Baby are best avoided in favour of crunked-up bags of fun like Rock Ya Body and Safe 2 Say, and while his style isn't testing those of fellow New Yorkers Nas and Biggie Smalls (again, RIP) with originality, he can still hold his own against the big boys. Most of whom, of course, are tiny compared to him.