There are some great moments in the new documentary Beats, Rhymes & Life: The Travels of A Tribe Called Quest: Q-Tip revealing the drums he sampled for “Can I Kick It?"; Black Thought of The Roots clowning Tribe’s early fashions (“They were wearing some real questionable-type shit,” he said, referring to their dashikis); and Busta Rhymes’s smile when reminiscing over “Lyrics to Go,” his favorite Tribe song. There is also a slew of rare archival footage from the late '80’s and early '90’s. (Check out the mullet on Dennis Miller!) Even though the documentary occasionally sinks into VH-1 "Behind the Music" territory, the director Michael Rapaport did a fine [...]

Picture it! March, 1990. Twenty years ago. Public Enemy's third album, "Fear of a Black Planet," was coming out in April-and then-popular music rag Spin put them on the cover. Sort of. They got the big type, but the B-52s got the picture. ("Love Shack" had just been a big hit!) And then there was another of Spin's long series of interesting if often insanely misguided articles on AIDS-this one by B. D. Colen was totally sensible!

It is really quite something that the New York Times is running, on page one, above the fold, an article about yesterday's White House press briefing that says "President Obama hardened his tone toward Iran on Tuesday." Ooh, his tone! Hardened! The Chicago Tribune and others say similar. And the Washington Post says "Saying U.S. is 'outraged,' president appears to mark new phase in response to disputed election." Appears? New phase? What? A phase of doing what? (He also said Americans were "outraged" about AIG, by the way, because some people were asking about things that concern America-not to say that what is, one hopes, an Iranian revolution isn't [...]