5 amazing facts about these iconic albums from 2002

This week, Radio 1's Mistajam is diving deep into music history and taking things back to 2002 to play four iconic albums in full on his show.

Each one is an absolute classic and all represent major moments in each artist's journey to the top. Celebrate these albums turning 15 with MistaJam on his show and online, with five amazing facts about the albums he'll be playing.

Listen to MistaJam Monday - Thursday on 1Xtra from 7pm

1. A Little Deeper is Ms Dynamite's debut album. It sold half a million copies when it was released in 2002.

2. The album won the Mercury Music Prize in 2002. "I feel really happy and excited that my music has been acclaimed and accepted," she said at the ceremony.

3. Ms Dynamite worked closely with Salaam Remi on the album, who also produced big songs for Amy Winehouse, Nas, James Arthur and The Fugees - among many others.

4. The album wasn't short on hits. It Takes More, Put Him Out and Dy-Na-Mi-Tee were all Top 20 hits in the UK and still sound fierce today.

5. Ms Dynamite originally planned to work with children, and the response to A Little Deeper from young people was a highlight for her.

"Young people just saying "I wanna be an MC, you've inspired me", that is what keeps me doing what I'm doing," she told The Guardian in 2002.

"That's my reward. Money can't buy that. Children are the future."

1. Despite having only two major hit singles (Work It and Gossip Folks), Under Construction is the biggest selling album of Missy Elliott's career. It shifted more than two million copies.

2. The album's third single was meant to be a version of her song Pussycat with Janet Jackson and Lil' Kim, but the finished version was too explicit to see the light of day.

3. The album wasn't short of A-list guests. Method Man, Ludacris and TLC appeared on tracks, along with two of the biggest music stars in the world - Jay Z and Beyonce.

4. Missy hoped the album would teach younger listeners about old school hip hop.

"It's old school, it's like how music used to be," she told Entertainment Tonight in 2002.

"It's going to educate the younger kids who might not know how far back hip hop goes.

"For the younger generation, they kind of think hip hop starts at Jay Z, Nas, Missy Elliott, whoever but it goes farther back than that."

5. The album ends with Can You Hear Me, a song dedicated to Missy's friends Aaliyah and Lisa 'Left Eye' Lopes, both of whom died before the album was released.

"It's the reality check of how short life is," she told ET at the time.

1. Considered by many people as one of the best British albums of the 2000s, Original Pirate Material cost Mike Skinner just £4000 to make in his bedroom in Brixton, South London.

2. The album was inspired by the sounds of UK garage and the politics of US rap.

"People really like garage, but no one's really saying anything worth listening to on the records," Mike wrote in his autobiography, The Story of The Streets.

"American rappers are saying stuff that people care about, and everyone listens to them.

"My plan was to say stuff that people cared about, but over garage beats."

3. There was no hip hop swag to the recording sessions - he recorded it in an empty wardrobe with duvets and mattresses to block out the echo on his voice and beats.

4. He also wasn't very impressed with British rappers at the time, describing UK artists at the time as sounding like "someone from Reading pretending to be Biggie or Q-Tip."

5. Despite its place in British music history, Original Pirate Material is The Streets' lowest charting album. It reached No.10 in 2002. Follow up albums A Grand Don't Come For Free and The Hardest Way To Make An Easy Living both scored him No.1 albums.

1. Dutty Rock was the album that started everything for Sean Paul. His debut album Stage One, which was released in 2000, didn't sell many copies or score any hits. This, his second release, however, made him a global star.

2. The album won a Source Award for Dancehall Reggae Album of the Year and a Grammy Award for Reggae Album in 2004. They were the first for Sean Paul, having since won awards at ceremonies including MTV, MOBO, and Soul Train.

3. 10 years after the release of Dutty Rock, the Jamaica Observer wrote that Sean Paul's success with Dutty Rock was "ground-breaking" for a Jamaican artist. The album sold 65,000 copies in its first week and entered the US charts at No.9, a huge success for a rising reggae star.

4. The album was such a success, Sean Paul went on to guest on two of the biggest R&B hits of 2003 - Baby Boy with Beyonce and Blu Cantrell's iconic track, Breathe.

5. From the very early days of his career, Sean said he hoped to bring some positive vibes into listener's lives. 15 years after the release of Dutty Rock, he's still doing just that.

"It's positive. With everything that's thrown at you, whether it be problems at home, problems at work, whatever," he told AskMen in 2004.