Friday, October 8, 2004

SUPERMAN HAD COME TO TOWN TO SEE WHO HE COULD ROCK: I have really been enjoying the new VH-1 five part documentary series And You Don't Stop: 30 Years of Hip Hop this week.

Starting from DJ Kool Herc setting up two turnables in the South Bronx in 1973, it has been a smart, reverential-but-not-fawning take on the history of hip hop music, with great use of archival video and interviews from just about everyone who ever mattered.

And, if you're not careful, you might learn something before it's done: like that the Sugarhill Gang was thought of as the Spice Girls of their day, or that Nas' Illmatic was the first album ever to be awarded 5 mics (i.e., 5 stars) from The Source, or how much the 1995 Source Music Awards in New York became the Gavrilo Princip of the East Coast-West Coast war.

It's on VH-1, so it'll be on constantly. Give it a try.

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