well that "distant relatives" reggae/hip hop thing was desperately bad. sorry bout that! it was completely unfocused, and came off more like nas half-heartedly promoting his next album on mtv or bet than any kind of historical investogation. truly the choice of sway to mc was ridiculous: nat geo needed someone with some vague scholarly chops or some notion of something beyond self-promotion. jeff chang, sitting right there, has done great work on these themes and should have run the show..

it was an amazing line-up of foundational figures, but they didn't do anything coherent with it.