I'll keep this brief, because it's so obvious it almost goes without saying.

I can't think of any time in pop music that has been shittier than the present, and the blame can be laid almost entirely at the door of R & B. A form of music so pathetically unimaginative that it couldn't even think up a name for itself - it had to sully the good name of Rhythm n Blues by stealing the term and decreeing that from now on it would now stand for Rhythm n Bass. A despicable, shamelessly cynical, watered down version of hip hop (formerly a vibrant, experimental, politicised, punk-spirited form of musical expression before the dark days of 50 Cent and his ilk), neutered and sanitised for the masses, R & B is like the audio equivalent of a Nissan Micra with blacked-out windows, a huge spoiler, and an exhaust the size of a dustbin. It's as if R & B was specifically designed by a marketing team to appeal to braindead acne-encrusted teens in white tracksuits and Burberry baseball caps yanked down at an angle suggesting mental infirmity. It's as if Ali G never happened.

Isn't about time the R & B backlash started??