Video: It Aint My Fault by Mos Def & Lenny Kravitz

He was an icon of New Orleans music, known as the “Creole Beethoven,” who operated mostly behind the scenes as a composer, arranger and producer. Though not a household name among casual music fans, Wardell Quezergue was an extremely important fixture on the music of New Orleans from the post World War II years until last year when he earned an arranger’s credit for the soundtrack of the HBO series, Tremé . He passed away at the age of 81 on Tuesday, September 6, 20011. [...]

San Francisco oozes Slow Food Farmer’s Markets, punchy Pinots and sexed-up, slightly punk-ified, smoky Mission District clubs. Paris? Baguettes, financiers, macarons, heavily sauced meats (and eaters) and alcoholic tragic, doomed, impossibly talented solo crooners. New Orleans evokes gumbo, jambalaya and Cajun shrimp too spicy to swallow and too delicious to spit out and sizzling jazz too politically/philosophically/co mpositionally abstract to grasp, but too sonically toothsome to resist. (The city’s relatively nascent hip-hop and heavy metal scenes are gaining national recognition are nothing to spit at either.) Imagine Paris sans [...]