Last Friday, my feature on The Arabian Prince, a seminal and slept-on figure in hip-hop history, ran in the LA Times. If you’d like to read it, it can be found here. I think it does an adequate job of summarizing who Arabian is and why he’s important enough for Peanut Butter Wolf and Stones to release an anthology of his ’80s material. However, as my interview with Arabian ran well over an hour, a lot of material got left on the cutting room floor. So below the jump, here’s the full transcript of the interview, touching on the history of Los Angeles hip-hop, NWA and Arabian’s unfettered love for Spongebob Squarepants.

Download:
MP3: Arabian Prince-”Strange Life”
MP3: Arabian Prince-”Let’s Hit the Beach”

(more…)

In kind of obvious but not really news, Muggs is/was sorely underrated. Retrospectively, and at the moment of first bong rip, the production on those first three Cypress Hill albums is black lights-out great. Also, I had completely forgotten that Rza and U-God pop up on “Killa Hill Niggas,” the latter turning in one his best guest appearances ever. Although, really I don’t need to hear Golden Arms telling me to “smell his aroma.”

Download:
MP3: Cypress Hill-”Illusions”
MP3: Cypress Hill ft. Rza & U-God-”Killa Hill Niggas”

File this under things I am contractually obligated to post on. For me, Badu and MMJ getting together is like giving John Belushi speed balls. I have no choice.

Download: (Via the unstoppable Gorilla Monsoon)
MP3: My Morning Jacket ft. Erykah Badu-”Tyrone”

A lot of you Internet lurkers seem to hate The Game, but per the gist of my Times review that ran yesterday, he raps well, picks good beats, gets great guest appearances, and makes albums that are competent homages to the West Coast gangster rap that I grew up loving. Granted, I probably could’ve used 250 words to drone on, but thus is life. Besides, I co-sign pretty much the entirety of Zeus’ review.   

The moral of the story is that The Game is not better than your favorite rapper but he’s better than you think.  Also, there is a high probability that at some point in the next 14 months, The Game will break into Dr. Dre’s house and boil his pet rabbit.

LA Times: The Game-L.A.X. Review 

Download:
MP3: The Game ft. Raekwon-”Bulletproof Diaries”
MP3: The Game ft. Lil Wayne-”My Life”

Until I give it at least a half-dozen spins, I’m waiting to reserve judgment on Everything That Happens Will Happen Today, the new album from David Byrne and Brian Eno, their first since the classic 1981 collaboration My Life in the Bush of Ghosts.  However, on this Tuesday night, as I furiously attempt to play catch-up from two weeks of illness and a much needed escape from LA (no Kurt Russell), “Strange Overtones,” is treating me right like it was a single from Chubb Rock.   If you’re a fan of Eno and/or Byrne, I’m willing to bet you’ll really like it, and if you aren’t a fan of either of those guys, maybe that whole “recorded music” thing just isn’t for you. May I recommend Parcheesi or shuffleboard instead?

Download:
MP3: David Byrne & Brian Eno-”Strange Overtones”

Ted DiBiase knows a winner when he sees one. That’s how he earned the nickname “The Million Dollar Man” when those Cash Money clowns were still learning to ice their first teeth. And rest assured, Teddy B. would’ve inevitably proclaimed Day 3 of Outside Lands, the winner of the match, even if he would’ve declared it from inside the VIP area, a Johnnie Walker Black in his hand and several lovely ladies draped across his arms.

It wasn’t only about the music, though any time you can see Toots & The Maytals, Sharon Jones & The Dap Kings, Little Brother and Wilco, back-to-back-to-back-to-back (in the back of the ack), you’re entering that sort of rarefied air where the only way to top it is to start throwing out dream scenarios. Like yeah, it could’ve been better if Jay-Z was backed by the Wailers and started making it rain with $1,000 bills and I grabbed one and then Ray Charles was resurrected and started flying around in a cape whilst singing “Georgia on My Mind.” For the most part, if you didn’t find something to like yesterday, your best bet is to become a Quaker, or a Shaker, if oatmeal isn’t your preferred breakfast.

Indeed, after two days of miserable, melancholy San Francisco gloom casting a pall over Outside Lands, the Sun finally started to dance right around the time that Sharon Jones took the stage, as though it was seemingly impossible not to sway to the Dap-Kings dazzling rhythms. But even before Jones and Co. came on, it was tough not to love the preceding set from legendary roots reggae outfit, Toots & the Maytals, led by the seemingly ageless, 62-year old, Frederick “Toots” Hibbert. Clad in a sleeveless black and rasta-colored leather vest and black pants, backed by three guitarists, two singers, a keyboardist and a drummer, Toots was catnip for the hippie-slanting audience, causing the predominantly Caucasian crowd to start shaking and shimmying with a off-beat series of moves best described as the “Help, I’m On Fire” shuffle. Really, that bad. But Toots was not as the set-list hewed closely to the band’s greatest hits, including ”Pressure Drop,” “Reggae Got Soul,” and “54-46,” which the crowd likely best knew via the Sublime cover, “5446 That’s My Number/Ball and Chain.” 

Sharon Jones: Ain’t Nothing Wrong With That

Photo via Crowdfire 

But legendary reggae artists included, when it comes to the art of live performance nobody in music can fuck with Sharon Jones right now. Maybe Erykah Badu. Maybe Jack White or Jim James. Maybe some other people I can’t think of at the moment, but really, there just isn’t any amount of hyperbole that could oversell how great Jones is on-stage. The Daptones’ neo-soul backing helps, sure. They’re razor-sharp, their horns precise and warm, their timing as fluid as the second hand on a Rolex. But Jones seemingly comes from another dimension, where the only comparisons seem to be people you weren’t old enough to have seen: Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holliday, Aretha Franklin in her prime.

Part of it is the voice, ostensibly so bottom-less than you could hear it at the other end of the world. Another part is her graceful dance moves, a spontaneous, limb-flying flurry of shoulder shakes, jazzy jukes, slick shuffles, wild arm gestures, toe-taps and something she calls her “Tina Turner Strut.” Did I mention she does this all in high heels? More than anything, it’s the sense of fun and celebration that Jones creates. At one point, she brought a guy out from back-stage who’d been trying to flirt with her and sang “Be Easy” to him, as a helpful minder on how to boost his game. At another, she summoned a goofball college kid in a buttoned up dress shirt out of the crowd to dance with her. It made for the day’s comic relief, with his stiff spasms so awkward that he seemed perpetually 10 seconds away from “rolling the dice.” Every time, I see Sharon Jones at one of these festivals, it seems like she emerges as one of the clear-cut highlights of the weekend. The woman has more swagger than 1,000 gun-toting rappers and if you haven’t seen her yet, I highly suggest that you bump her up in your shows-to-catch queue. It’s enough to make that old agage about ”they don’t make them like they used to” seem completely false.

The next act was Little Brother, who did a commendable job in filling in the gap between the high water marks of the weekend: Jones and Wilco. The North Carolina-based duo get a lot of flak in certain quarters for being a little derivative and a little dull. On album, the complaints sometimes ring true. I like all three of their records, but rarely find myself going back to them. At times, they can also sound preachy and the decision to part ways with 9th Wonder was probably a good one, as his Fruity Loops-soul was starting to get repetitive. But when you see these guys in person, it’s pretty hard not to root for them.

Little Brother: Not Actually so Little in Person

Thing is, Phonte and Big Pooh do all the little things right. They’re passionate on-stage, bounding from one end to the other, constantly striving to stir the crowd. They don’t rely on hackneyed hip-hop cliches (i.e. Which side of the crowd is louder, when I say hip, y’all say hop,” etc. etc.) They’re well-rehearsed, both rapper’s chiming in with ad-libs at the right times. Plus, the fact that they love what they’re doing comes across in their humble but confident demeanor. In addition to cuts from The Listening, The Minstrel Show and Getback, Phonte and Big Pooh also rhymed over a variety of instrumentals including Prodigy’s “Keep It Thoro,” Lil Kim’s, “Crush on You” Outkast’s “Rosa Park’s” and Mobb Deep’s “Trife Life.” It was a fun 40-minute set that validated the Okayplayer set’s high appraisal of these guys. Even if they may never stack up to their canonized influences, there’s little doubt in my mind that Little Brother are one of the best rap groups to emerge during this decade.

Finally, Wilco, a band often called the American Radiohead, took the Twin Peaks stage to close out the festival two days after its British peer effectively kicked things off. (Jack Johnson was officially Sunday night’s headliner, but in the words of Gob Bluth, “C’mon.”) Placed in an (probably) inadvertant but direct contrast with Radiohead, Wilco more than aquitted themselves. Playing the “Who’s better Wilco or Radiohead” game is like doing the “Beatles or Stones” thing. Both bands are great and saying one is better than the other is pretty much retarded. Who cares? We’re lucky to have both. Yet if forced to pick between them, I’d always opt for Wilco, whose performace Sunday night was one of the best I’ve seen from the band.

In their Kicking Television incarnation, Wilco are practically a super-group and at any given moment, they can slide into the world-crushing Harlem Globetrotters thing, where Nels Cline makes funny faces and wanks off on 28 minute guitar solos and the band locks into their “aren’t we all amazing” jam sessions and you have to agree, even if you’re looking at your watch and wondering when all this overwhelming virtuousity is going to end. But last night, the band delivered a beautifully, understated performance. Tweedy, clad in a black-shirt, black shades and jeans came out on the acoustic guitar, with a simple steel pedal buffering the mellow, country-folk of “Remember the Mountain Bed” from Mermaid Avenue Volume II.  

Who’s The Champion?

Photo via ppparasol

By song two, “You Are My Face,” the band started to press its foot lightly on the gas, with Cline delivering pin-point guitar licks and the band seemingly feeding off the laid-back but excitable crowd and the warm white sun setting slowly in the West. The highlight of the set came early, during “Spiders (Kidsmoke), usually a linchpin of the latter half of Wilco performances, but with only an hour and fifteen minutes allotted, the hypnotic Krautrock-infused jam was deployed early and with maximum effect. Particularly animated, mid-way through the dozen minute-song, Tweedy began clapping his hands and addressing the crowd.

“San Francisco. This is the home of the best concert goers on the planet. I know you guys can clap your hands….Even if you hate Wilco, it’s okay, I know you know how to keep rhythm.”

In turn, a sea of hands started keeping time and the band descended further into the jam, seamless in their transitions, effortless but never condescendingly winking at the audience. During “Hummingbird” Tweedy dashed around the stage with the youthful joy of a small child.  On “I Am Trying to Break Your Heart,” he conjured the opposite emotion, making a very well-known song played in front of a massive audience sound incredibly personal and vulnerable, especially surrounded by the cracking tape loops and glitchy static. As for “Jesus Etc.,” it was pretty much miraculous, yielding the sort of transcendence you really only get from the truly great songwriters. Sure, Sky Blue Sky might’ve been a little staid compared to Summerteeth, A Ghost is Born and Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, but even the Million Dollar Man would be hard-pressed to buy a better band than Wilco.

The crowd was older and tamer yesterday. No wholesale destruction of chain link fences, no claustrophobic clusterfucks trying to get across the endless expanse of festival ground, no scofflaws streaming into the VIP section to taunt the fools that squandered $700 a ticket for nicer bathrooms and a slightly more refined environment in which to purchase over-priced wine and beer. No, things seemed to run smoothly after that initial shell-shock of day one, with its chaotic tenor and reports of public transportation meltdowns for those who stayed to the bitter end. 

Outside Lands is about as far as you can get from the hippy spring break of Bonnaroo, whose Superfly promoters this event shares. Camping isn’t even allowed. Instead, there’s a “Wine Haven” tent where you can sample a voluminous array of vino, numerous gourmet food vendors and even a stand hawking BBQ’d oysters. Judging from the quick once-over I gave them, the oysters seemed fine, but really, few more dicey moves exist than ordering shellfish at an outdoor music festival. That’s the gastronomical equivalent to drinking a bottle of MD 20/20, picking up a hooker and swerving past a police station.

Instead, I opted for a super-burrito from Zona Rosa in the Haight and walked into the park just in time to catch the set from Liars, playing on the tiny Panhandle Stage in Speedway Meadow. I’ve never seen the Australian weirdos before and judging from the off-kilter eclecticism of their albums, they seem like the sort of band where you never know what sort of set to expect. But in their too-short 35 minute performance, they definitely impressed me, running the gamut from noisy, garage band Stooges-type riffs, hypnotic Can-like grooves and all-out full bore thrash. If there was a problem with the set, it had little to do with the band itself. Ultimately, bands like Liars aren’t really festival bands meant to be compressed into a half-hour where you play the singles, nod your head politely and get out. They seem like the sort of band that thrives in smoky, cave-like spaces, where they can stretch out their  jams and lock in. But it was over before that had the chance to really happen.

Help! This Jacket is Cutting Off the Circulation to my Neck

Next was Lupe Fiasco, whose set solved fears that The Roots’ fan-base would disintegrate were a gigantic fireball of Mojo magazines to ever come to earth and incinerate ?uestlove (this being contingent upon a Ghostbusters I-like scenario where like Ray Stantz, the Roots drummer is forced to confront destruction from the thing he loves most). In the two years, since Food and Liquor confirmed his place as one of the best young rappers on a major, Lupe’s turned himself into a masterful performer.

I haven’t seen Kanye’s “I Am The Great Neon Gatbsy” tour, so I can’t really speak definitively, but as far as what I’ve seen, Lupe might be the best performer in rap right now. His backing band is funky and loose, his set-list is strong and as a front-man, Lupe is wildly charismatic. He scatters across the stage in this sort of nimble, tip-toed glide, in perpetual motion, throwing his arms towards the crowd, rattling off tongue-twisting rhymes, a total ham but rarely histrionic. The largely melanin-free crowd went beserk, hippies kicked around hacky-sacks during “Kick Push”, the brah contingent got their hip-hop quota, their sorority girlfriends sang the hook to “Superstar.” It was kind of gross actually, but Lupe was great and even if I still don’t want to smoke a blunt with the guy, I’m sold on him as one of the best rappers of his generation.

But on this bland and bitter Bay Area day, the biggest draws seemed to be Dinosaur rock. After Fiasco, I caught about thirty minutes of Steve Winwood, ex-frontman for Spencer Davis Group, Traffic and Blind Faith. This being San Francisco and there always being a ready supply of aging hippies ready to wax nostalgic and teenagers ready to pretend, the Winwood set went how you’d expect: lots of fluttery dancing, half-rembered sing-a-longs and joint-smoke poured out for all those that couldn’t be here. At 60, Winwood’s voice is still as powerful and incredible as it was when he was a teenaged prodigy and really, I won’t lie, I was just lying in wait for “Dear Mr. Fantasy.” When he closed the set with a 10 minute version of that most famous Traffic cut, I was a happy man and ready to head for shelter during the three three hour gap between Winwood and Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers. After all, I was starting to do that Thriller stagger again, my legs as wooden, rickety and useless as Mitt Romney. So yeah, I missed Ben Harper, Primus and Cake. Then again, last time I checked this isn’t the year 1995.

Hey, When Did David Spade Learn to Play Guitar?

So Petty. You can’t hate Tom Petty. It’s practically impossible. You can be apathetic about him. You can find his songs overplayed by Classic Rock Radio. You can even hate those ridiculous hats the guy wears. But Petty himself, is practically impossible to loath. Petty and the Heartbreakers are the ultimate “pretty good” band. Their Greatest Hits is rock-solid, their live set proves that Mike Campbell is probably one of the ten most underrated guitarists ever and also, that these guys benefited heavily from being a good, popular band during a decade in which most major label rock was mostly unlistenable, well unless you’re Cam’ron. Spandau Ballet, anyone?

The Heartbreakers’ head-lining set was what it needed to be. Slick, professional, filled with the songs that everyone wanted to hear. During “Free Fallin,” I half-expected people to start sparking campfires and roasting marshmallows. Mid-way through,, they brought out their Palaeozoic peer, Stevie Winwood, to play the old Blind Faith song, “Can’t Find My Way Home,” and followed it up with the old soulful Spencer Davis Group staple, “Gimme Some Lovin.” It was a fitting touch and by the time Petty finished with the one-two combo of  Van Morrison’s “Gloria” and “American Girl,” they’d eloquently stated their case. I might never be a Petty die-hard, but you’ve got to respect them. They certainly deserve their fanbase and judging from the crowd that stayed until the very end, that’s a whole lot of people.

Don’t expect much. No one with an iota of common sense would attend a music festival after being struck by the snarling combination of African Sleeping Sickness/Mono/Ricketts/Gout/Scurvy that waylaid me for a full two weeks of misery and and continues to leave my left leg swollen and tubby as though it belonged to William Howard Taft. After one half-day of Outside Lands, my knees are wailing like banshees, the cartilage attenuated and frail, my calves feel like a madman autopsist got to play slice and dice and this coffee that I’m drinking is weak and dirty and nowhere near providing me with the jolt of energy that I need to spin out this gibberish before 10:00 a.m. Gadzooks.

I have no one but myself to blame. But what are you supposed to do when the plane tickets are booked and the press credentials secured and Radiohead and Beck are playing back-to-back on Friday night? Of course, you go, even if you’re walking like a zombie in the Thriller video and are sporting a devil’s haircut received last week that’s left you wishing you had an 80s Jacko jheri curl instead. So despite this tenuous condition, I found myself limping up the hill to Outside Lands last night, under the slate-colored San Francisco sky, one of those cold, clammy bay area nights, full of thin, penetrant fog and 60,000 people swarming ant-like in every direction through San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park.

Give the Outside Lands organizers credit. Few places in the world make for a better venue than the 1,000 acre verdant sprawl of Golden Gate Park, site of dozens of hippie love-ins and a place that the moment you enter has you stifling the almost insatiable urge to start making jokes about the usage of the words “groovy” and “far out,” and of course, the Scott McKenzie-sanctioned desire to start rambling about “wearing some flowers in your hair.” I didn’t see anyone with flowers in their hair last night. As far as crowds go, this one was decidedly normal. Not the hipster hordes of Pitchfork. Not the hippy haven of Bonnaroo. Not the LA sleaze of Coachella. Just normal, decent-seeming people, willing to go completely Escape From New York, the moment it appeared that the Woodstock ‘99-sized security staff wasn’t looking. Indeed, yesterday, the vibe was mildly anarchic, with people alternately wantonly hopping the fence into the VIP section and breaking down the frail, chain-link fences to create alternate, impromptu paths through the park, over fallen trees, up slippery dirt hills, not the sort of thing fit for a half-incapacited journalist just getting over a Bubonic escapade.

Beck: “I Did The Robot One Too Many Times and Look What Happened”

But like I said, Beck and Radiohead back-to-back, with Wilco slated for Sunday. Had the organizers thrown Belle & Sebastian into the mix and re-animated Elliot Smith and Kurt Cobain from their graves, they could’ve had a shot at getting all of the premier 90s rock genius’ in one three-day swoop. Alas, reclaiming people from Hades is a bit much to ask of a festival organizer. After all, Stevie Winwood is playing this afternoon and I’m afraid that’s the closest we’re going to get. I mean he did die once or twice between Traffic and “Higher Love,” right?

Back to the music, right, the music.  Once I finally got my bearings in this massive, labyrinth, spread out across six stages and innumerable VIP areas, double-top secret VIP areas and the hand-crafted throne of skulls that serves as Radiohead’s trailer, I caught the final few songs of Britain’s great reggae group Steel Pulse. Steel Pulse is the ideal outfit to kick off a festival like this, a mellow energy (despite the heavy, politicized nature of their catalog), great tunes, the right sort of act to spark that first joint of the weekend. Of course, with the sky the color of spit and that mean San Francisco wind barking in your ears, Steel Pulse’s spliff on da’ beach lilt seemed a bit misplaced, though they certainly sounded excellent.

Navigating from stage-to-stage is a bitch, so I lamentably missed the chance to catch Vancouver sludge-psych masters, Black Mountain and Angeleno favorites, The Cold War Kids, in favor of snagging a good spot for Beck, whose new album, the 60s pysch-oriented Modern Guilt, is probably my favorite thing that he’s done since Sea Changes. It’s nowhere near a perfect album, there seems something a bit soulless and robotic to it, the work of a prodigiously talented craftsman on auto-pilot, capable of churning out great song after great song as though it seemingly took no effort. Yet removed from the context of “another Beck album in 2008,” it’s probably better than almost any guitar rock album made this year, even if it is a little dull and lacking in joie de vivre.

Krang: A Huge Fan of “Devil’s Haircut”

But that seems to be the Beck we’re getting these days, at least if his Outside Lands set was any indication. I had the opportunity to catch Beck once in his Midnite Vultures incarnation and there’s really no comparison between the two. That Beck was an animal: writhing, preening, swaggering, splaying himself across a gigantic bed-on stage, selling you on the theater, a weird blend of irony and id that made for one of the best showmen I’d ever seen. This boring black-hat, black suit Beck just sings his songs, polite, timid, and competent, as though he were being controlled by Krang. The set-list hewed heavily to material from his last three albums, though he threw in “Loser,” “Devil’s Haircut” and a cover of Dylan’s “Leopard Skin Pill Box Hat,” and I can’t say that it wasn’t a “good set.” At this point in his career, Beck has too many lights-out, incredible songs to do anything less than that but there was something missing, something flat and with about 15 minutes left in his set, things grew so dull that I bailed in an effort to beat the fierce flood of people steady mobbing it to Radiohead.

So this Radiohead band. As Randall Roberts said in the latest edition of the Weekly, there just ain’t all that much to say about these guys anymore. And even if there was, I probably wouldn’t be the ideal guy to say it. See, a little confession here, I’ve never been a big Radiohead fan. During the 90s, when The Bends kick-started their world-beating streak, I was buried in a pile of Source magazines, Maxell tapes full of Mobb Deep and Wu-Tang and Maurice Malone shirts (don’t ask). Liking an effete, whiny, British band was the furthest thing from my mind. Give me Liquid Swords any day long, the cold world manifesting itself in shogun decapitations and the GZA’s rugged slang, no need for that karma police prattling. In recent years, I’ve grown to respect Radiohead a great deal. I own all the albums you’re supposed to own and I like each of them, but out of any of the bands I consider great, I don’t think there’s another one I actively want to listen to less than Radiohead.

Shiny, Happy People

This parodox was on display during the band’s nearly two hour long set on Friday night (see set-list here). I can’t say that it wasn’t a great set. Few bands have ever been more innovative than Radiohead and even fewer have amassed such a deep discography. There wasn’t a dud song in their entire performance (save for some sound problems that marred things at times) and Thom Yorke is certainly a passionate performer, whipping his neck back in anguish, staggering around with a sprightly, elfin hop, letting that celestial howl slice through the billowing layers of fog. At this point in their career, Radiohead are consummate professionals, flawless in their execution, you just can’t sweat the technique.

So yes, at times, you’d look up at the dirt-blue sky beginning to blend to black, then affix your eyes towards the soft purple glow of the light floating from the stage, then close them and just listen to the stuttering guitars and patient, prodding drums and Yorke’s heavenly wail and think that it doesn’t get better than this. But as good as I think they are and as much as I appreciate them, I will never love Radiohead. For me, their sound will always be a little chilly, a little too hermetic and serpentine. This isn’t about whether they’re brilliant or not. They obviously are, but to me, Radiohead will always feel like a tank full of beautiful, exotic, tropical fish, dazzling to look at and consider, but ultimately, I’ll always prefer a dog or a cat, maybe a bit more mundane and simple, but warm-blooded and amiable.

Thing is, Thom Yorke could turn a sing-a-long of “Happy Birthday” into a lugubrious dirge and while there’s something to be said about that, after an hour and a half, I’d had enough. It didn’t help matters that my legs felt fit for amputation and my blissed-out Southern Californian naivete failed to pack appropriately for the cold. Wanting no part of an exit strategy that had 60,000 people about to throng the un-prepared mass transit system, I ducked out before the encore, hopping onto the most crowded bus I’ve ever been on, complete with a Goliath-like sociopath with a Dillbert tatoo on his neck and a pair of giant eyes tatted the back of his bald pate. He threatened to kill anyone who dared cross his path, at least six people, including several recent Asian immigrants who didn’t speak a lick of English. Just like the karma police, they’re never there when you need them. 

Predictably, Chris GVB already scooped me on this, but if you haven’t heard “No one Does It Like You,” the new single from Department of Eagle’s upcoming album, In Ear Park on 4AD, it’s highly recommended listening. For those who don’t know, Department of Eagles isn’t a group of patriotic ornithology fanatics but rather the combination of Daniel “Grizzly Bear” Rossen and Fred Nicolaus (yes, the Fred Nicolaus.) As you’d expect from Rossen’s other band, “No One Does It Like You,” features celestial harmonies and a beautiful, shambling melody. One might say that it even soars. And then one hopefully might get savaged for making such a horrific pun. Either way, it’s a wonderful song from a group significantly better than both The Eagles and The Eagles of Death Metal.

Download:
MP3: Department of Eagles-”No One Does it Like You”

Since this week’s recurring motif seems to be, songs that I owned on cassingle, why not Domino’s “Sweet Potato Pie,” which narrowly missed the cut of my G-Funk mix in favor of the Long Beach rapper’s other hit, “Geto Jam.” God knows what happened to this dude, he pretty much fell off the earth after his pretty good, eponymous debut and I’m guessing he didn’t make it to Stanford with Ahmad. So yeah, anyone who knows what this guy’s up to, please fill me in, well, other than maintaining the world’s worst Myspace page and presumably running a lucrative yam and yam-related products company.

Download:
MP3: Domino-”Sweet Potato Pie”