Tom, Dick and Frank

Seems like the hype-world has gone mega blogtatstic for Amy Winehouse.

Could it be from her win for Best Female British Artist at the recent Brit Awards? The publicity at the after-parties with suspicious white powder lodged in her nostrils? Her stint in rehab? The mass amount of tattoos she has that she got to alleviate boredom? The smokey club jazz singer voice that leads you to disbelieve that she only 25 and white jewish? Her connection with Mark Ronson?

She was one of my first blogs on here, like, ages ago. So I guess I'm just really down with it. Naa'meen?

But I'm going to take you back to her first album, Frank. It was released in 2003 just after I had arrived in ye olde London towne. Back then when tech, prog and dnb were pretty big to me, this jazz stuff was pretty nanna-ish. We used to cringe when the bars of 'Stronger Than Me' would come through when the ad played on TV. My boss at my last job in LDN loved the album. She was in her 40s, single, jewish background, a director in the company, posh and everyone used to be scared of her. Fits the audience bill, no? I don't know how I dealt with her for 8 months.. shows my strength of character maybe. But I digress... long story short is that I basically ripped as much music of anyone and everyone before I went travelling around Europe so I wouldn't go mental.

Its pretty surprising to now see that the 4 or so songs that she released off Frank, none of them charted higher than #57 ('Take The Box'). With the popularity of Back to Black, Frank has re-entered the charts.

Amy Winehouse - In My Bed

'In My Bed' charted at #60 and was produced with Salaam Remi (who also worked on Back To Black). It uses the same beat as Nas' 'Made You Look'... probably because Salaam Remi worked in his 2002 album, God's Son.

Nas - Made You Look

Other hip hop collabs being when Ghostface Killah used 'I'm No Good' on his Fishscale offspin, More Fish.