watcha listenin to profcrispy?

well. under the influence of teaching a class on graffiti, i'm back on the hip hop tip, and one thing i got hold of was the latest jedi mind tricks album, "servants in heaven, kings in hell." vinnie paz has amazing flow: it more than makes sense, throwing down science and even the occasional joke. the tracks, by stoupe, sample eveerything from italian folk music to brahms and amount to a perfectly coherent sound. i would, in all seriousness, put these folks up against anyone who has ever recorded hip hop. i just wish they had a different name, as i feel their art is considerably better and more profound than george lucas's.

also been listening to john prine's fair and square, from 2005, which might be the first album he's made since that stands up with his first three albums, which were perhaps the greatest classics of what we might call "folk rock." just to perhaps piss you off (or perhaps not) again: this material deserves the reputation that dylan has as the best writing of the rock era, or up there. i would just drop prine into the dylan critical/historical slot and the story of music would be substantially improved. here we get some amazingly prinian moments, such as "safety joe," which devolves into laughter after the mandolin player screws up. prine says: "that was golden." "other side of town" is an amazing lyric, up there with "sam stone" or "christmas in prison."

i've been deep into early piedmont blues, listening to tampa red, blind blake, barbecue bob, and the incomparable blind willie mctell. i don't know, for some reason i'm just more in this urbane vein at the moment than into the delta.