Do I gotta say it out loud? That shit is straight psycho, useless, unproductive, dead-end, reproducing the politics of the academy without ever aspiring to its heights. I don't know. I honestly don't. I'm pretty sure I've lost everybody by now. This column is dedicated to Scarface, who may have a new album coming out pretty soon & I hope to God he does because he's one of the best MC's ever to pick up a mic, and to R. Kelly, whose two new albums come out on Tuesday & about which we will almost doubtless be writing next week, unless this completely unbelievably good shit from Emperor Jones has inhabited our bodies Alien-style by then, which it may well have. May well have done. Asterisk sigh asterisk