"oh boy" is tearing up daytime radio! look for it to enter the chart at about number 19. but the video has kind of ruined it - cam'ron has the world's blankest face (unless that is embarrassment). he might be one of those rappers who thinks of performing as "gay", i'm not sure because this video is all i have to go on. i really want to see the videos for what remain his best songs: "magnum" (where the beat rips the magnum p.i. theme tune without it seeming lame at all, probably because it is such a convincing club anthem) and "horse and carriage" (with mase! [oh mase, if you happen to be googling your name in a moment of boredom between sermons: the rap world demands your return to the game; ja rule can never replace you with his composite-of-dmx-and-ll cool j rhyme style; embrace the devil!])

shakira - "underneath your clothes"
am i the only person to wonder why shakira-as-pop-phenomenon is so strangely uninspiring? she is columbian! she has weird lyrics! she uses panpipes! she apparently can do several genres competently! she spazzes out when she performs! she has a few "cultural commentators" trying to re-contextualize her as more than just a pop star (this one is very important!) - but none of it has added up to much. so far she's put out one half-decent conquer-world-markets global pop anthem (the weakest attempt at this for ages, and i think only mega-successful because of the current lack of competition) and now this vintage-alanis ballad, where she distinguishes herself by singing like she's choking on something.

it could be a lot worse, but why am i so bored of seeing her on tv already? it wasn't like this with ricky and he only ever had to release one really good single! it wasn't like this with britney or christina. i think i'm even more interested in what enrique might release next! i'm putting it down to annoying marketing: the spin has been all about seeing shakira as a genuinely charismatic antidote to the pop puppets (where is this charisma on her bleedin' records or in her videos?), but this comes off as an uninteresting narrative to accompany media saturation - britney has confrontational videos and an endlessly contradictory public persona! christina has the same plus really horrible clothes! ricky has special padding on his arse for it to look extra-buff! shakira has "charisma"!

this is not good enough.

clipse - "grindin'" remixes
from trickology: "the neptunes have officially lost their minds with this track. the beat has to be one of the worst things i've ever heard, let alone this is supposed to be a single for the radios. i guess you can't be hot forever."

i don't understand this criticism at all but at least it made me want to hear the song!

so ludacris dropped "southern hospitality" in 2000, and almost immediately it was co-opted by dancehall as a choice beat to toast over - it had the kind of blunt-instrument, almost atonal feel that a lot of dancehall producers use, creating its hooks from exaggeratedly jagged fx, something that opens up a world of choice for the vocalist: any weird melodic (or not) rhyme pattern can work, any semblance of a hook will stand out and become addictive. "grindin" takes it another step further, just a drum beat and a violent midi-gunshot effect, sounding even more riddim-like. it can be menacing or almost comical depending on who's rhyming over it, so its cool to hear the two remixes doing the rounds just to listen to a bunch of mcs have fun attacking this beat.

first mix: nore does his apropos-of-nothing thing; pusha t claims to be able to cook flapjack in 3 minutes; baby and lil wayne get all sing-song; kind of the "old-school posse cut" version. "reggae mix": some dancehall-minded mcs (i can only identify kardinal offishall, whose verse is awesome) make weird noises; the "summer holiday" version. both mixes must be heard! (original mix is kind of boring in comparison as it only has clipse - they're okay but they sound lonely.)

some stuff i saw and/or heard this week:

rell featuring jay-z - "it's obvious"
timbaland beats don't always make themselves clear until the extended fade-outs where he brings out the little flourishes you've been (almost subliminally) hearing behind the vocal. rell is an usher clone. i haven't seen him yet, but i want him to be fat or something so if he comes on mtv we can say "its the fat usher!"

system of a down - "aerials" video
added to the list of songs that sound better coming out of a tv - it all suddenly made sense! and it struck me that s.o.a.d. are in an enviable position: they could get away with pretty much any wacky sound and still sell a few million as long as there is the anchor of an absurd, operatic vocal. (they are the new queen?!) the video possibly taps into cronenbergian body horror shit (as does the new korn vid) but i wasn't really paying enough attention to it (i was busy listening!).

ms dynamite - "dy-na-mi-tee"
self-consciously summery bit of fluff. i don't even know why this (and other similar confections like "turn off the light" by furtado and that "white boy with a feather" thing from last summer) annoy me so. i meant to get the dynamite track off the ed case album but the title eludes me - for the love of god, can someone tell me??

linkin park - "points of authority" (remix)
a modern technology blitz on your senses - so overcooked and triple-processed and so great! the remix makes the whole idea behind linkin park explicit: completely ego-free worship of impact. seriously, did you ever hear one instrument (including voice) impose itself above and beyond the feel you get from their songs? it's all there to service a single goal, a super-gratifying and hollow techno-rock rush effect they probably heard in a korn middle-eight once, which they now recreate in genius pop song form. its absolutely terrifying!

heather b - "steady rockin"
"i'ma tell how you livin', how your style be different/you be careful what you ask for cuz you just might get it" surely this is how good ms dynamite could sound if she employed the real dj premier instead of some lamer british primo wannabes!

i can recall only two of this week's new entries in the top 40. perhaps i'm not keeping up or perhaps "shooting star" by flip and fill (in at number three?!) has been made up by bored radio one website employees; or even some crazy musician hackers putting their best mp3.com tune in the official sales chart! you guys! elton john at number four: i assume this is a commercial radio thing. my dislike for commercial radio is probably mostly irrational; i'm sure they play some if not all of the good tunes radio one plays, but i like radio one's semi-myth of playing the freshest, newest, most upfront tunes - the idea that if i turn it on i will be hearing something essential, something that i must hear and have an opinion on. this is bollocks really, but its fun to buy into anyway.

i love following the weird inconstencies of the playlist and trying to work out the angle they're pushing ("mop have a top five hit, middleground hiphop is obviously under-represented! we must have the beatnuts and dilated peoples on daytime radio!") - the second-guessing game they're playing with the nation's youth. this is something that doesn't really happen with commercial radio. it may be that, say, southern fm (or even radio two)'s playlist is closer to what people actually want to hear at any given time, but where's the fun in that? radio one tries (and of course fails) to represent every real or imagined music-centered youth sub-culture in the country whether the people who make up these sub-cultures are listening or not - a bizzare thing to even attempt, which is what leads it to being so riddled with conflict and contradiction. it is also the thing that makes it so fascinating for anyone with tolerant ears and an interest in what everyone else is listening to. shame about the djs though.

anyway, the two tunes i actually do recall: "work it out" still doesn't hit with any particular force, an unnecessary excercise in retro funk minus any squelch or sweat or depth of sound. its not an unpleasant listen, beyonce's voice is fun, but remember the big single off the last austin powers soundtrack was "beautiful stranger" ("work it out" obviously would have been better if was produced by william orbit). "aerials" is way too sane in comparison to other system of a down singles; it has what might be armenian strings; it has a pretty good doom-riff; it ultimately sounds too much like an album track instead of something special, but the bearded singer really knows how to make nu metal-style constipated emoting sound fun!

master p + cam'ron - "bout it, bout it pt 3"
i feel like i've been preconditioned to find everything master p and his fellow no limit soldiers put out to be essentially worthless; he is certainly recognized as a rap-mogul phenomenon and an interesting character, but its almost like his music exists only so people can feel ok listening to cash money records - "i'm alright listening to this objectionable music because i know there's someone out there making it even dumber!". also can't help that, on the tracks i've heard, no limit fail to exploit any kind of double-time, hihat-abuse tension on those 75bpm bounce beats: they sound genuinely sluggish, like the track is slowing your heartbeat and exerting it's gravitational pull, and like the mcs can hardly bear to spit out their rhymes. but this can be fun too sometimes; it can work just like any other stuff where you get that dragged-under, inverted rush. (i'm thinking of the sab and goatsnake and even portishead but i don't want to say it - yes, this makes it doom-rap.)

"bout it, bout it" (part three and they ain't done yet!) pretty much fits the bill - it really is fucking slow! and it has this instantly evocative whiny g-funk moog keyboard line - perhaps even too evocative of the g-funk era, which may be why nobody really wants to use the sound anymore, and why at first i thought this song was a west-coast parody! - and it has p twisting and grunting and spluttering, and cam delivering the clearest-enunciated verse ever - it also has that dude who turns up on every cam record, julez santana, but i can't bring myself to be interested in him. cam and p compliment each other well and ensure that i've been playing this song many, many times over.

"born slippy" provokes mass suicide attempt.

two people died who were at saturday's fatboy slim beach shindig, which is terrible, but surely it is an overreaction to cancel everything at brighton beach ever?? spizzazzz was really looking forward to the t4 music event (as if vernon kaye and june sarpong could start a riot!). we didn't go to the fatboy thing, but a walk around brighton afterwards suggested most people had a fun and relaxed time.

(excellent commentary on reaction to the event at no rock'n'roll fun - yes, we do read other websites! like nylpm [the dude who runs it has recently featured two classic biggie songs in his top ten - when will he write about them??] and the very addictive hiphopsite news section, and some other stuff we will have in the links bar when we can be arsed to put it up.)

the question this week's chart poses is would fischerspooner have gone top 10 if they didn't fuck about so much? the way "emerge" is structured always seems forced to me. i mean, yes that's a really good synth line, but they came up with a proper classic euro-pop, snap-like chorus and then made us all wait far too long for it - perhaps so it could fit some wacky stage show; perhaps so nu-electro people wouldn't get turned off by the simplicity of verse-chorus-verse (or chorus-chorus-chorus); perhaps to distance themselves from what is thought of as faceless, personality-less dance music, to show a certain refinement in case we talked about fischerspooner in the same breath as shakedown.

the nu electro scene where their music has been allowed to evolve probably has different values to the ones that fostered "at night" - i don't really know much about it beyond some token mp3s and that mix cd on the front of muzik magazine. however, i had assumed it was still about dancing: "set it off" by peaches (especially that really good remix) didn't bother with this pointless structure-tampering; it was pretty much a good dance tune with some (in the context of right now) bold cheapo-synth textures and swearing.

the mix of "emerge" that gets played on the radio seems more than a bit defeatist; all that teasing and building up to something that lasts for like a minute! it generally makes me frustrated and wound up, and very happy i've never heard it in a club, where i would undoubtedly want to punch the dj in the face unless he had a second copy to cut up, old school grandmaster flash-style. whatever, maybe it only says something about my current listening habits and my lack of patience. it's a shame though, because there aren't many songs i can think of where i'd bother to wait for the melodramatic climax if the build-up is so drawn out. "emerge" genuinely has a great chorus that everyone in the country should be singing along to and turning up when it comes on, but instead i think it failed to make a strong impact for a really dumb set of reasons, and now the oppurtunity has been wasted.

this interview really has been heart-warming! and it overran by 15 minutes.

e crunk signing out. thanks to all.

I have no doubt that the live sound will be great - a lot of those re-recorded In Search Of songs sound wonderful, and I'm sure they are learning with each new recording they do. I'm confident that this will be great - listen to Pharell's enthusiasm! I'm sold on that alone. I can't imagine this guy getting so worked up about lackluster music.

m p i want you to be right so much!

oh no, "live" neptunes on the timberlake record like on the reworked dumb heavy rock version of "in search of..."!

I am so psyched for the Justin Timberlake record. I swear - an entire record of Justin and Neptunes - it's going to be like the new fucking Thriller.

this is a fucking excellent beat. what is it??

yeah, too many interviews tonight but it's definitely cool to hear that pharrell is a genuine music geek. its a shame how all interviews on the rap show must inevitably come around to "westwood is a national institution" though. there's no need to canonnize the fella, he only plays the newest hits!

Wow. They are really brown nosing Tim now, aren't they? Whatever. If they say so. I trust Pharell.

just because she has coffee enemas it doesn't make her a lesbian, you madman!

Pharell is a geniunely cool guy. Very smart, very passionate about what he does. Good interview.

"A record is the best teacher in the world." - Damn straight, Pharell.

westwood's voice cannot be traced back, he is a cypher, his style is unique and therefore should be applauded.

justin is apparently dating janet jackson now !?! but yeah his album is gonna be bonkers.

Oh wow! Eight new tracks with Justin Timberlake? That's going to be huge. Wow.

This just in: Tim says "I've been in the game all of my life, mahn."

Why does Westwood pronounce 'man' like that? It's bizarre.

"I respect you being on the humble, mahn..."

"they're not feeling my disses, they're feeling my albums!" - actual good point on the nas vs everyone war from donnell.

it's pharrell from the neptunes and he speaks exactly like he sings!

Will he play any Wu-related stuff? That'd hit the spot.

Tupac has the "biggest box office ever" of any rapper? Is he forgetting Will Smith?

this track is not as good as "loungin'", but still i think ll does relationship records pretty well, as he should since he's been cranking them out for a hundred years!

Depending on the time of day, the ratio changes. Some shows only play hip hop - for the most part, I would say it's about 60% hip hop and 40% hip hop. A lot of this r+b being played tonight I'm not familiar with, but virtually all the hip hop is pretty big on the radio in NYC.

it's the new ll cool j joint that totally reminds me of that "heart-breaking" track off the streets album!

m p, what is the ratio on hot97 of these kind-of dull r'n'b tracks he's playing now to the great hiphop tracks he was dropping earlier? it's amazing how energy-sapping some of this stuff is. where the party at??

a quick search tells us he is signed to laface, home of outkast and tlc - what were they thinking?

in his heart of hearts, i think it's fair to say from this interview that westwood does not give a fuck about the kind of r'n'b donnell puts out.

yes i mean diddy pid before he was diddy pid.

yeah, that was all bouncy like late-nineties (severely underrated) puffy productions!

Does this show always get r+b heavy after the first hour?

I do like this Eve song, though. Nice.

"my neck, my back" = best gross-out sex tune since "put it in your mouth" - and the beat is like one of those dancehall reinterpretations of a generic r'n'b beat!

it's like donnell is holding westwood at gunpoint and forcing him to play the gloopiest syrupy shit! but now i just got an image of him going home and putting on the new sonic youth record to relax.

i dunno what this tune is but it is perhaps the worst thing he's played all night.

"did you write a lot of the songs yourself?"

that "just chill" tune was good cuz it had rah digga and busta's voice always works with super-deep dubby b-lines.

Flirtatious!

This Missy track is really good. Things might pick up from here...

This show is getting really boring now - can we have some more hip hop, please?

donnell jones, go home!

enthusiastic over-use of hi-hat cannot always save a tune from being dreary as fuck.

this current segment is proof that it normally takes a very high-quality r'n'b tune to break through to the uk charts - or at the very least one with a distinctive sound. i'm still not sure that many brits even like urban r'n'b in the hot 97 sense; just some songs can fit that definition but also fit with with what i see as rainbow-coloured brit chart music. which is why missy can team up (if not in the actual collaborative sense!) with bassment jaxx as well as faith evans i guess.

Hey, what is this song? It's not bad. I'd like to get a copy of this...

No! Not Mario's butchering of "Just A Friend"!

This is just fucking wrong, man.

oh shit, donnell jones is in the building! does this not answer your question?

he has awful taste in r'n'b. exactly what does donnell do that is so filthy?

whoa, cash money are using the classic "don't look any further" bassline that since 2pac used it on "hit 'em up" has become the signal for a very fucking nasty dis track. but sadly i couldn't hear any viciousness going on. cash money have fallen off!

Some good songs right now - I'm waiting for him to play "Addictive" by Truth Hurts, which seems pretty inevitable at this point...

"ATL up in this piece!!!" - Those words should never be uttered by British men in earnest!

...and despite the fact that it's Busta Rhymes' given name, "Trevor" is soooooo not a hip hop name.

"Mmmm..Trevah!"

bounce for me. do they play bounce stuff on hot 97?

more new 'angrier and less fun' ludacris.

The.
Callers.
Are.
Hilarious.

What's his email? I want to get a 'big up' from Tim Westwood!

"I respect classic joints, but c'mon dawg. This is 2002, this is hip hop!"

that was a brief two-song medley of ms jade, newest timbaland signing. both those songs are really good!

westwood really didn't used to talk so much and shout and frighten old ladies a few years ago. he sat back and let the records play and talked very slowly over "strange games and things" and other classic funk tunes. i honestly dunno what happened, but i suspect it coincided with his first properly-released compilation (where he smoked an enormous philly blunt on the cover) and his getting shot in the leg (westwood lived but biggie died = proof there is no god). some kind of dj midlife crisis? or he suddenly became aware of his new-found national exposure?

I don't know this song either, I really want to know what this is. Very good, indeed.

C'mon one of you - give the man a call!

No! Not "Oh Boy" again!

bit of a false alarm, sorry...

I loved it when Tim said "I'm strictly 'bout it 'bout it". That cracked me up...

styles p - "good times" played for a whole verse. yet more post-blueprint new york type shit, but it's brilliant.

"Damn, I love that joint. We need to talk about this, right now."

He's constantly fiddling with the records, playing them over and over, or just the part he likes - Suddenly getting the impulse to stop songs halfway through to talk - He's shouting whatever pops into his head... He's got ADD, right? Right?

in an amazing piece of cross-promotion, westwood is also on bbc1 right now in an expensive-looking ad for radio 1.

let it be known that the ugly-dj myth is not helped by this.

I really wish he'd stop "toasting" and just let the songs play.

And please, please, please - enough with "Oh Boy" - stop playing it from the start over and over!

westwood>funkmaster flex>hot 97>def jam>roc-a-fella = all too close for comfort. the horn/string blast at the start of "oh boy" is the most exciting thing ever.

"Oh Boy" by Cam'Ron. Great song.

All of the best songs currently played on Hot 97 in NYC, so far...

westwoodbot!

this new one is way better than "grimey"! but now a remx already? with classic too-many-rappers syndrome

"ONLY WESTWOOD CAN DO THIS! COME ON!" "WESTWOOD HAS ENTERED THE BUILDING! SHOW SOME RESPECT!"

I might come around to liking this guy for exactly the reason Suds says - his enthusiasm is sorta contagious.

Homeboy, I came to party.

Nice to hear "Grimey".

Does Westwood have any control over his voice? He keeps going back and forth from "faux thuggish" to "fruity brit", sometimes from syllable to syllable.

So here's another Noreaga/Neptunes song. It's all about the medleys, I guess?

playing right now i think is the new noreaga single, and already the second neptunes beat he's played in 15 minutes! i'm keeping count tonight to prove their absurd omnipresence

i heard it was a million or more!

westwood is completely of the non-skillz all-about-the-personality-and-the-hot-tunes school of djing. and the shouting.

I still can't get over Westwood's voice.

Why is the mixing so shoddy and awkward? Are they only going to play Jay-Z songs?

i think saturday night radio 1 rap show can be described as radio 1's official end to the weekend since he brings the tempo down dramatically from that house that tall paul van okenfold was playing. but perhaps there's a million headz all over the country who are applying make-up while "i just wanna love u" is playing right now, just about to get their groove on.

It is so strange to hear British guys trying to sound like thuggish black men from Brooklyn. Trust me.

Nice to hear Jay-Z straight away...

that was radio 1's official start to the weekend banging house! but it may be too late for that now that it's saturday night and the weekend is almost done. and now it's the intro westwood has been using since 1995. he's so cheap

I'm listening to Radio 1 live now, about 15 minutes before the hip hop show begins - why are they broadcasting a parade with loud, irritating techno? I'm not sure what the point is supposed to be, I feel as though I'm missing some crucial bit of information.

Hi. I'll be joining in on the Radio 1 live blogging thing a little later on. In the meantime, I suppose you can check out my own blog, Fluxblog, and decide whether or not you value my opinions.

spizzazzz is currently mad into the westwood: radio one rap show so we'll be posting while listening (with special guest spizzazzzers!) tomorrow from 9pm british time till whenever we get bored. listen live at the radio one site or like, turn on your radio.

sum 41 - "what we're all about"
"fat lip" was a beautiful thing, i still haven't got bored of it cuz it has so many parts and so much audible excitement in playing fun rock music and rhyming like the beastie boys and really, like i've probably said before, it's one of many nu metal songs that starts with an awesomely hooky riff to build giddy anticipation before it hits you with the crunch (dance producers should be taking note of sum 41 and linkin park!). "in too deep" had a much simpler structure and a grunge tempo but also a high-grade chorus driven by those excellently snotty vocals of the scrunch-faced dude (plus a really good guitar solo that i might only consider good because of the video where guitar-dude rises from the water in a swimming pool while "delivering"- yeah!).

and now there's "what we're all about", which is very disappointing: terrible sequenced drums probably aiming for licensed to ill punch and a lazy 5ive-like chorus (5ive were alright at the time but let's just admit they almost always had shit choruses!) are the things that stick out immediately. there's still some of the playful mashing together of the last fifteen years of attitude-rock in the very short thrash bits (best thing about sum 41 is they are trying to fit in not only the biggies like grunge and rap-rock but also seemingly every minor sub-genre as well!), but it can't save this from ruining my intangible feeling about the band. so now they suck!

i totally hated the prodigy ages before everyone else. so long ago, in fact, that now would be a good time to find their hijinx refreshing and start liking them again, if they hadn't just released the worst single ever to enter the british charts. lamers! at least j-lo charted higher, as did red hot chili peppers - "by the way" is actually very pretty and nice after a few listens, even if their traditional alt-rock textures seem to automatically ring most people's grunge alarm. (certain spizzazzz posters cannot see this, and think rhcp to be good only in comparison with the calling. i feel bad for the calling though, because who will defend them? anyone?)

i would like to hear the new baha men song, because i recently saw them live for 15 whole minutes and they were great, but winmx is too much of a pain in the fucking arse to download it at the moment. this brings up a troubling issue: i have never knowingly heard it on the radio, seen it on mtv, or read about it in any publication. what mystery lies behind this baha-blackout?

craig david wishes to clarify that a coupling between craig david and ms dynamite would be as troubling as that time nathalie umbruglia went out with a lookey-likey of herself. or joey and pacey off dawson's creek. craig david knew that relationship could not last because of their very similar features. therefore craig david would like to regretfully take a step back and blush shyly.

craig david cannot fathom how this would hinder craig david's success. craig david has respected ms dynamite from day one.

craig david assumes this hata has not seen the u.s. video for craig david's popular hit "walking away", where craig david has been xxxtra-tanned, so those american dudes don't get confused about craig david's blackness. craig david will win america's heart!

craig david suspects those weird swedish producers who make the euro-timbaland beats.

craig david answers: high thong.

craig david is very angry with elvis. and blogger.

scarface ft jay-z - "guess who's back"
roc-a-fella is behind most of my favourite hiphop singles at the moment - this one exploits the drums from "hova" as part of a surprisingly warm, multi-layered beat. jay is cruising but that doesn't matter since there's so much confidence in the way the roc put out these tracks at the moment. it's good to hear scarface again - i dunno what happened to other rappers with this kind of rich, authorative tone he has; certainly his voice feels fresh to me so i'm thinking the thin, whiny voice (or it's cartoonishly gruff flipside) is too omnipresent regardless of rhyming ability.

maybe too many rappers are trying to twist their natural voices and their words into weird shapes to make an impact, though of course some interesting flows have come from this trend (best and worst examples of this to be found on the eminem show). scarface sounds utterly relaxed and comfortable, doesn't need to stretch anything to prove he still deserves a verse, and he makes this tune addictive as fuck.

MILIAN - "when you look at me"
it is impossible to get bored of this because it has enough hooks to fill an entire ashanti album, and none of them really sound like they belong in the same song (which merely shows up the inherent tyrany of "songs" anyway!). so you can spend weeks trying to "get" this tune, to feel comfortable with it so you can move on to sap the energy out of another track, but it won't happen because it doesn't fit together like most radio songs do - in fact it sounds like milian set out to prove that "you think i'm so predictable" line to be false. mostly it's the same kind of very playful messing with pop-r'n'b convention as "am to pm" was, except this has even weirder textures, like the distorted synth bass that pops up before the chorus - why is it there?? i dunno but it captures my attention and it sounds like a brilliant "hey! what about a distorted synth bass!" studio moment.

i still have this feeling like i'm gonna look back on this in a year and wonder why i listened to such a strained, unnatural thing all the time. i think i considered the same thing about "i'm a slave 4 u" though - and nine months later that's my favourite britney tune ever! and wu tang forever is my favourite wu record now!

nas goes bonkers.

nas dropped out of hot 97's summer jam thing because they wouldn't let him stage a lynching of a life-size jay-z dummy! but don't give up on him yet, he's also taking steps in the right direction by criticizing funkmaster flex - hot 97's number 1 dj and also the man responsible for tim westwood having any sort of credibility amongst rappers. i don't have a problem with westwood except when he broadcasts "live" with flex in new york and most of it is just laughing - they cut a song and the two of them start laughing for minutes! (even longer than that scientifically-tested bomb-dropping sound which the big dawg djs claim is the greatest bomb-dropping sound ever.) i mean what is so fucking funny? play a record you fucks!

when they do find time to play a tune, its normally a good one but then flex ruins it by using his standard 'repeat-cutting the first 4 bars six to eight times' dj technique - obviously honed as a result of the god-like aura that surrounds him so no-one could ever say, "flex! why are you making motherfuckers wait even longer to hear the first verse!?" (this is the main reason i like westwood: he doesn't give a fuck about skillz; plus he gets to pick the cream of flex's promos because the radio one rap show also has to play several fair-to-middling brit-hop tracks due to the licence fee or something.) then they laugh some more, perhaps this time with beanie sigel pissing his pants in the studio with them, since flex seems to be genuinely in thrall to roc-a-fella records. so it's definitely about time someone took the dude to task, i suppose it's not surprising its nas since he's always dissing his own proteges and his good pal noreaga.