Momma I'm Sorry by Clipse

I haven’t written anything because all I talk about now is yoga. This isn’t about yoga: put this song on and listen all the way through. Then go to the two minute/thirty-three second mark where Malice finishes the chorus with a slack “Miami Vice…” Because it’s the way the song started it has the effect of a round and you expect to hear the chorus repeat. Instead, Pusha comes in hard half a beat before you think they’ll start up again and says “Sorry heavenly father…” and it gives you that little impish energy jolt, like after a low dip in yoga but rap; he did it, you did it, and there’s just a lot of unexpected success.

North North by Project Pat

If you have read the Turntable Lab website for a long time you remember Bob Bannister. Not the first time I met Bob Bannister but not far from the first time I met Bob Bannister we went to his house and listened to this song. He likes flannel and was wearing flannel. He rapped this song; walked up and down his long studio apartment like he was the singer of Iron Cross or a dog guarding his territory. He knew all the words like they hadn’t been written, like Project Pat had looked to him to ghostwrite the future. Rolled up sleeves and maybe jean shorts, maybe not. “Cracking n---a’s jaws/running hoes into walls/n---a’s yelling north north/hoes screaming north north” and then Juicy J ends the song saying “fuck these crosses, fuck these crosses” and he felt it, Bob, like a Mississippi Burning moment. I was new to New York and I wasn’t sure that was what it was like. It turns out it’s not and that’s all our loss.