Sublime

Amir was everything. Every. Thing. The name itself means “Prince.”

He conducts an ongoing interrogation about what it all means. What’s black culture? What’s hip-hop? What are the responsibilities of a society and the people in it? And his inquiry isn’t bloodlessly academic, either; there’s something very consequential about his approach.

Ben Kenney, who was playing guitar with us before he decamped for Incubus, was there with me,

But then there were the midlevel names, the singers and groups that had a strong following but weren’t moving fast-food-franchise numbers of units. At that point, Dr. Dre intervened and told Jimmy Iovine, the head of Interscope, which acts he thought were cool and should be kept on. He pointed the fickle finger of fate at Talib Kweli, at Mos Def, a

Twitter hadn’t arrived yet, so I went on the online community I had created, OkayPlayer, and asked, “Does anyone know about this guy? It’s one of the best demos I’ve heard since Jill Scott or Slum Village.”

ghazals.