Ben Weasel Watched "8-Mile?"

Ben's written a great piece on one of the other things besides baseball that he knows a damn lot about: music. He mentions watching Eminem's movie, "8 Mile," and noticing certain parallels between modern hip-hop and old-school rock.

He also asks his readers who they think might be among the best hip-hop artists out there. My knowledge of hip-hop is about as limited as my knowledge of Bach or Beethoven, but I can say that one of the two* hip-hop CDs that I own, the first De La Soul album Three Feet High and Rising, is pretty great, for many of the reasons Ben outlines as qualities of good, creative, intelligent music. Also, since he's talking about sampling, I can mention that Three Feet High... features some neat hooks sampled from a pretty diverse mix of sources (from Otis Redding, to the Turtles, to "Schoolhouse Rock"). I think the review (linked above) pretty much explains why that album does for me what it does.

*The other one being the almost ubiquitous Licensed to Ill by the Beastie Boys. I picked that one up for tracks 3, 6, 7, 8, and 11. Somehow I knew all those songs before I ever owned the CD. A classic.