Jeff Chang, his book Can't Stop Won't Stop about the birth & rise of hiphop is fascinating.
Roland Woodbe, best record reviews ever. Here:
http://siltblog.blogspot.com/
Byron Coley, if you don't know him then flick through a copy of the Wire and read his singles review column, it's pretty much the only tolerable thing in there.
Dave Tomkins, he used to write for the Wire but doesn't seem to anymore, his hiphop reviews were always a lot of fun to read even though I usually finished reading them none the wiser about what the record sounded like, or if it was any good. One of my favourite quotes from him was something he said about the Neptunes at the height of their popularity, he described them as "sitting on a bean bag full of unused vacation hours"
here's an article of his i just found through google
http://blogs.myspace.com/index.cfm?f...ogId=301888715
Phil Shapiro, another Wire writer, he seemed to go the way of all Wire writers who have a sense of humour, i.e. I don't think he's at the magazine any more.