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Pour out a lil’ something for Nick Ashford, one half of the prolific Motown songwriting duo and pop group Ashford & Simpson. For those who know Ashford & Simpson mostly for their ’80s hit “Solid As A Rock,” Jay Smooth dug up 12 other classic songs that they wrote over the course of their nearly Read More

This week, G.D. and Joel are joined by the always-insightful Jay Smooth of IllDoctrine, Donwill of the critically acclaimed hip-hop group Tanya Morgan, and Wyatt Cenac of “The Daily Show,” to talk about Michael Rapaport’s documentary on A Tribe Called Quest, “Beats Rhymes and Life.” You’ll also learn about Wyatt’s secret crooner past and Bushwick Read More

Oh Peggy.  Peggy, Peggy, Peggy. You know it’s a good episode when Ida Blankenship‘s zingy racist one-liner (“If I wanted to see two Negros fight, I’d throw a dollar bill out of my window”) is the least interesting thing that happens. Don’s alcoholism is getting to be a bit tiring, so I appreciate Matthew Weiner Read More

We are the World Haiti 25 — whose presence at the top of the singles chart is as damning a refutation of democracy’s plausibility as you’ll ever see — is so awful that it nearly prompted Jay Smooth to shutter his website. Jon Pareles reviews the song, and notes the chasm in vocal ability between Read More

Sorry about the lack of posts, folks; we’re all swamped with real life. In the absence of actual content, I turn to the always illuminating Jay Smooth, who tackled that travesty of a town hall Michael Steele held at Howard University. Jay agrees with me: Steele is boring as hell. (And that when he attempts Read More

I can’t remember the first person who linked to this blog or shouted out one of our posts. The feeling is a jolt, that fizzy, writerly mixture of pride for being acknowledged and neuroses about whether you just said something really dumb or really poorly. It still feels that way, maybe more so as the Read More
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