Dan Strachota

In the five years since the release of the last Coup album, Party Music, there have been enough high-octane political scandals to power the space shuttle. The poorly reasoned Iraq War, illegal spying tactics, Plamegate, the torture photos of Abu Ghraib, Tom DeLay's indictment, the botching of Hurricane Katrina —...

I hate the Grateful Dead. I've always hated the Grateful Dead. Numerous times over my lifetime, people have tried to get me to appreciate the band, with little success. The interminable solos, the dope-smoking-moron lyrics, the ridiculous ambient jams — I'd rather shove chopsticks up my pee hole than listen...

For the past couple of years, Hervé Salters has been the secret weapon of the Quannum crew, supplying vintage keyboard sounds for Blackalicious, Lyrics Born, and Lifesavas. Now, the French-born, Berkeley-based musician steps out front, releasing a solo album of playful, funky hip-hop, composed entirely with Clavinet, Hammond, Rhodes, and...

Luaka Bop's third volume in this series -- following discs devoted to Brazil's Os Mutantes and California's Shuggie Otis -- is subtitled The Funky Fuzzy Sounds of West Africa. That's a far better descriptor than world psychedelia, because, while fans of the Grateful Dead and the Quicksilver Messenger Service may...

Busdriver belongs to the rapid-firing, über-caffeinated slam-poet school of MCing. While such diarrhetic verbalizing can be numbing, the L.A. artist's verses prove consistently fascinating, mainly because they're witty and well-detailed, with a cockeyed surrealism. Much of Fear of a Black Tangent concerns the ridiculousness of the hip-hop milieu -- not...