Let’s take a quick break from Waiting for Godot with some good old meat and potatoes rock n roll:

Sticking with old Stretch Armstrong Show freestyles, here’s a good one from Q-Tip and Mad Skillz (I remember a lot of heads turned on Tip after hearing this cause it was like hearing Cosby trying to be Pryor):

Oh, hell yes. Classic late-night freestyle:

It’s like butter.

Shuffle on, now.

Been reading the Keif book. It’s fun (in small doses).

So is this:

There is a lovely piece by Matt Zoller Seitz over at Salon about the music and movies he shared with his wife, who died at 35:

I’m listening to Jen’s favorite album, Bob Dylan’s “Blood on the Tracks,” as I write this, for the first time since 2006…

When I met Jen, I respected but didn’t like Dylan. She could quote the lyrics to many of his best-known songs the way a preacher quotes the Bible. The first time she put on “Blood on the Tracks” in her dorm room — on the evening of our first date, after eating Chinese food and then going to see “Eat a Bowl of Tea,” a film I have not yet revisited — she moseyed around the room singing along with the first song on the album, “Tangled Up in Blue.”

When she saw me trying not to wince, she said, “What, you don’t like this?”

“I like his lyrics, but I’m not sure they’re as deep as people say, and I don’t like his voice,” I said. “He can’t sing. He sounds like a Muppet.”

“You don’t listen to Dylan because you want to rate his technique or pick out holes in his argument or figure out what the message is,” she said, caressing the air with her piano hands. “It’s about the words he uses and how he sings them, and the rhythm. It’s him saying, ‘All right, let’s go here now,’ and you saying, ‘OK, fine, let’s.’ He’s just a guy with a guitar talking to you. Bob Dylan can sing. He just doesn’t sing the way you think a singer is supposed to sound. The title isn’t about a train. The tracks are the album tracks. He’s spilling his blood here.”

There was a knock on the door — a roommate returning a book. Jen moved to answer it, touching my shoulder as she passed.

“Just clear your head and listen to the music,” she said, “and see what happens.”

[Photo Credit: Nathan Makan]

It ain’t cool in New York today, it’s cold. Here’s the latest from Michael Schmidt, the man who never sleeps:

It’s been dead for fifteen years, right? I was chatting with a friend a mine a few weeks back, a record head and beat maker, and he assured me that hip hop is alive and well.

This drooling review of Jay Z’s new book by Michiko Kakutani in the Times did nothing to restore my faith, however.

Wonder if Jay writes about this:

Okay, here’s early Jay that was actually slammin.’

One of these days I’m going to cut you into little tiny pieces…

The Boss is lost on me but that’s just a matter of taste. Still, I regard him as a great musician and songwriter and performer. For the many of you who dig Bruce, check out this post over at Pitchers and Poets.

This is one tune of his that I love:

And here is a 1975 newspaper article on the Boss by our pal John Schulian.

Childhood memories…

Couple of freestyles from the old Stretch Armstrong Show on WKCR, featuring the Artifacts and Mic Geronimo over the “Nappy Heads” beat.

Sunny day in New York, so…

Today’s cherce is brought to you by Larry Roibal.

Let’s turn it out, man:

Don’t fergit the Creedence:

Diggin’ in the Crates at Atlantic Records…