We Are The Champions - Queen
Dr. Funkenstein - Parliament
Jesus Is The Best Thing - James Cleveland
Well You Needn’t - Thelonious Monk
Standing On The Verge Of Getting It On - Funkadelic
Human Nature - Thriller
Your Mom’s In My Business - K-Solo
The Ultimate - Artifacts
Rock ‘N Roll (Could Never Hip-Hop Like This) - Handsome Boy Modeling School
Smiling Faces Sometimes - The Undisputed Truth
What You Won’t Do For Love - Bobby Caldwell
What Can I Give - Fred Hammond
Tempus Fugit - Miles Davis
Got Your Money - Ol’ Dirty Bastard
Sum Shit I Wrote - Common
Low Rider - War
Know That - Mos Def, f. Talib Kweli
I’ve Been Watching You (Move Your Sexy Body) - Parliament

Don’t know what you’re doing for Valentine’s Day?  Try Chateau Blanche.  I don’t ride hard for every restaurant, but I’ll tell you…they good!

Went to the car show today. I saw a lot of very nice cars, but there was only one thing in the building that almost made me wet my pants: this 1970 Boss 302.

Coming close was this 1969 Mach One. Only thing about the Mach One was that it didn’t have on good shoes. Some mag wheels and fat tires on that car would’ve knocked me out cold. Cold, I tell you.

*****

Lately, I’ve been trying to figure out whether I believe that LL Cool J wrote those early rhymes. Knowing what the standard was at the time, it’s hard to believe that he would’ve had a ghost writer, but the fact that he hasn’t written any seriously literate lyrics in a long time makes me wonder. I mean, yeah, the market has changed, but you’re telling me that a 16, 17 year-old boy is writing lyrics like, “You’re a FREAK! You think you’re Lady Godiva/ some girls are live but Yvette is liver…” Okay…Lady Godiva? Now, my guess is that LL, who didn’t graduate high school, probably didn’t read Lady Godiva. He may have, but I wouldn’t bet on it. So the question is, was Lady Godiva commonly known back then? Like, if you asked the average above-average knucklehead, would he have a clue who Lady Godiva was, let alone be able to include her in a rhyme? But the Lady Godiva stuff is easy to swallow. Let’s look at these lyrics from the original Rock The Bells.

The bells make your energy escalate
A sort of musical fury L.L. might detonate
Subject matter entitled “The Bells”
The lyrical arrangement is by L.L.
My program strains the tympanic membrane
I’ve been ordained the BLZ I’ll flame
Paragraphs I concoct, Cut Creator’s like an organist
Cool J exists as a journalist
I illuminate over any number on the Richter
My throat contracts like a boa constrictor
You’re totally engulfed by the structure and the format
It’s not dormant, it goes to the core, man
As you repent, you’ll say I went
To torture individuals for exitement
Ambassador, the fiend of Cordor
Dialect so def, it’ll rip up the floor
Ignite and excite with verbal extensions
What I’ll mention will put you on pension
Makin’ you tremble, nothin’ resemble
The bells and if it don’t
I disassemble
hit if you bit
I go have a fit
The master impresario of lyrical wit
A hip-hop creature, concert feature
Amateur teacher, my rhymes reach ya
When I commence with excellence
It eradicates levels of pestilence
Upon a plateau
No mortal can go
Mythological characters stand below
Rock the bells

I could do a vocabulary lesson out of that verse. And I appreciate that about it, but it just doesn’t seem consistent. You would think that he would have been able to rip a verse like that at SOME point in the intervening 20 years. Like I said, maybe I’m off base. I just wanna know.

*****

UPDATE (1/29) I just ran across this stuff today, but it doesn’t really warrant a new post

Don’t misunderstand me, I don’t hate animals, but suffice it to say that I’m not the least bit bothered that Barbaro got put down. In truth, I’m not glad that the horse is dead, but I am glad that the coverage will stop. That was more annoying to me than all the Terrell Owens stories that could ever have been written.

Technology provides us with some tremendous opportunities, but I’m tellin’ you…some things just cannot be foreseen.  Like a sperm donor who pays child support.

Maybe one time when I’m feeling philosophical, I might go a round or two with this, but for right now, I’m just stunned.  After reading the article, I’m not quite as shocked as I was when I saw the headline, but still.

What part of the game is that?

Looking through some old posts, this is something somebody came over here trying to find and I didn’t know.  I had been wanting to know it myself, though.

Cold Sweat.

James Brown - Lead Vocals

Trumpets
Waymon Reed
Joe Dupars

Valve Trombone
Levi Rasbury

Alto Saxophone
Alfred “Pee Wee” Ellis

Tenor Saxophones
Maceo Parker
Eldee Williams

Baritone Saxophone
St. Clair Pinckney

Guitars
Jimmy Nolen
Alphonso “Country” Kellum

Bass
Bernard Odum

Drums
Clyde Stubblefield.

I think what I wanted to know who the drummer was.  Now I know.

I’m delinquent with posting the results of the first annual (maybe more frequently) Bell Multicultural High School Madden tournament. This year’s winner was Eduardo Martinez, who won by the absolutely ridiculous score of 85-69. That looks more like an NBA Live score than a Madden score. Suffice it to say that for both finalists, offense was not a problem. Defense, on the other hand…

Lester Spence brought up an interesting point in the comments last time. He mentioned that we might be about 15 years from the point at which a coach whose main experience comes from playing Madden will be hired. It’s not entirely out of the question, but I think there is a limit to what Madden can really teach. Now I’ll be the first to tell you that Madden will up your basic football IQ by 300 points. Or at least, it’s possible to really learn the game of football by playing Madden. However, the thing about video games is that they’re built to produce scores like the one we saw in the finals. Now granted, my two players weren’t really doing too much on D, while top Madden players will tell you that defense is the name of the game. But given the way the Wii is working, sooner or later, it might just be that playing the video game will be a virtual replacement for the real thing.

Yes, there will be two Black coaches in the Super Bowl!!!  Geeked up is not the word.  This is almost as good as the Eagles going again.  (Which they will…)

How much music is too much?  I currently have about 8700 songs on my ipod.  A friend of mine has a somewhat mathematical model of a reasonable number of songs for a person’s library.  He calculates that the upper limit of a library should be about 18K songs.  After that, he says, you’re treading into some area of dementia.  His formula is this: if we say that there about 52 really good songs that come out every year and multiply that times 3 genres and allow for a 75-year span of music, that comes out to just about 18000.   A couple things to note:  I don’t think that 75-year span is the listener’s lifetime, I think that’s the span of the 52 songs/genre.
On the real, this is a very modern discussion, since it’s only with the advent of the mp3 player that we count music libraries by songs instead of albums or tapes.   Cuz thinking back to the era of the 45, I can easily see buying more than one 45  per genre per week.  In other words, I don’t know that I really agree with the model, but I’m willing to take it at face value and say that 18,000 songs is a cutoff point.  That’s more than twice what I have now.  But somehow, I think that, barring concurrent hard drive meltdowns and whatnot, I’ll be getting close to that number sooner or later.

Now I ain’t gonna lie, there are some songs in my collection that I have just to have.  For instance, I have this two-disc set of Mahalia Jackson songs.  Don’t get me wrong, I respect Mahalia as a legend, but more often than not, I hafta be in a particular mood to hear that type of singing.   But then, that’s why I burn the whole disc, because there are times when I am in that mood.

Then there’s the goodness of coming across some previously-unknown goodness.  There are several songs that I came across like that, the most notable being Separated by Slave and The Body That Loves You by Janet.

So long story short, I’m still aiming to get to 10000 soon.  Eight thousand songs after that?  I truly don’t believe that my tastes are that wide.  We’ll see, though.

Doin’ What Comes Naturally - Rose Royce
A Roller Skating Jam Named Saturdays - De La Soul
Friend Or Foe - Jay-Z
Time’s A Wastin’ - Erykah Badu
Well You Needn’t - Miles Davis
Christopher Columbus - Flip Wilson
Tramp - Otis Redding
Da Funk - Redman
Fly Girl - The Boogie Boys
Mary - Take 6
Held Down - De La Soul
Promises - India Arie
If It Don’t Turn You On - BT Express
Eat ‘Em Up L Chill - LL Cool J
Super Soul Sister - Heatwave
Whispering - Benny Carter With Oscar Peterson