Lauryn Hill: "Lose Myself"

Back in the day, the Beat King and I used to run another blog about rap stars that fell off. Clearly, one of the main contenders was Lauryn Hill - and we linked to a great story in Rolling Stone about how L-Boogie lost her goddamn mind, which can you find here. Among other things, Lauryn started playing the guitar - which is always a sign that something is wrong where rappers are concerned.

It's pretty interesting to note, because if you look through any late 90s magazines and such, you will see Lauryn being held up as a the future of hip hop music. She could sing, rap, produce...the whole deal, and her Miseducation album won a ton of awards and still stands as a masterpiece, despite having possibly the worst skits ever. Of course, it turned out that Lauryn wasn't exactly the sole musical genius she would have had us believe - and a lot of that album was blessed by collaborators. Including John Legend when he was doing his 10 year stint as the world's greatest backing artist.

The reason I'm putting all this down, of course, is that Lauryn Hill has surfaced with a new track, called Lose Myself, which may or may not be an ironic title. Man, first D'Angelo comes back, and now this. I'm not sure I can handle the excitement.

Rap podcasts

I can't lie. I never really understood what the point of podcasts were. I'm still not sure I do. So you get to listen to something that is 10 minutes long. And then what? But the longer ones I can dig, and I've been gravitating towards some of the better rap podcasts out there on the web.

Which often brings me to another problem. Mixtapes are too hit and miss - quite frankly I don't always want to listen to a throwaway, unmastered verse over a 10-year old instrumental. But I think I may have finally a found a few podcasts that are consistently worth checking for.

The first, and by far the best, must be Fat Beats radio, as eastvillageradio.com - if you check the May 6 show playlist here you will see what I mean. There's like 15 white labels in a row, including some pre-Illmatic Nas - always guaranteed to get me open. And, at least most of the time, the DJs let the damn song play and don't ruin them with two much deck flexing. Another decent show at East Village Radio is Mark Ronson's one, although sometimes there's all sorts of crazy tracks featuring the likes of M.I.A. and various other head cases.

The other one that I'm listening to is the mixtapeshow.net podcast, which was doing OK before the latest episode, which had no music whatsoever. Instead they gave us a roundtable on the Don Imus affair. It almost sent me to sleep before Willie D suddenly turned up from Iraq, of all places, and started talking about public policy. Now that was one of more surreal experiences of the past week.

Jointz: International Players Anthem

It can be easy to forget that, before Andre 3000 lost his goddamn mind, he was a very fine rapper. Then he stopped rhyming because, for whatever reason, he found guitar chords more interesting. Which was OK for a while, but soon started to irritate, especially when he was singing about Dracula getting married. So he started rapping again, or at least stumbling over a few tracks on that Idlewild mess.

But now he seems to have got his flow back together, pretty triumphantly too, on the UGK track International Players Anthem. His verse is over no beat, no less. This must be the first time an Andre 3000 verse has had me amped since, like, the year 2G. And actually reminds me of the verse he kicked on the Goodie Mob track Thought Process from that Soul Food album in '95. Yes, that is the kind of useful knowledge I carry round in my head these days.

Cricket: Shoaib Akhtar is a gangster on the run

Now that the interminable World Cup is finally over, and I can start insisting it never actually happened, it's about time to get back to the real business of cricket: namely, observing the glorious spectacle that is Shoaib Akhtar.

This time, he has been interviewed by Osman Saimuddin for this excellent piece in Cricinfo, where he muses on matters of great import:

"You can't sow sugarcane and expect to reap rice. We have a knowledge of everything but knowledge is not wisdom. Wisdom is doing. Being practical takes a lot of emotion."

No, I'm not entirely sure what he is talking about either. Still, makes a change from slapping coaches and waking up their wives. And allegedly taking steroids, before missing the World Cup because of trace levels of Nandrolone. I sense that Shoaib will never find true happiness until he takes his place on the Bollywood screen. And that might happen, according to this link. Perfect role too as a "gangster on the run".

Case of the P.T.A.

So my main man Ghost Style has got me taking part in an 'ELT rap' programme for kids at a school here in HK. Which is pretty cool, because they are the future.

I've decided to perform 24 Bars Roll Out, mainly because there is only one cuss word in there and I can remove it easily. And the track can't really be misconstrued about being about anything that might lead the kids astray. Plus it's a battle rap, in case any cocky punk thinks they want to start something.

So in honour of my return, I thought I'd link to my favourite song ever about school. And funnily enough, it doesn't involve Coolio and Michelle Pfeiffer. Unfortunately YouTube won't let me embed the video, but you can watch the Leaders of the New School classic Case of the P.T.A. here. I tell you, Busta Rhymes should rock a fluorescent hoodie more often. And what in god's name happened to Dinco D, Milo and Charlie Brown? On this, Wikipedia isn't much help.