When The Beat Takes Over Me

Prince Francis “Street Doctor” – I am currently in a Nyquil-induced haze, so please excuse my writing today; I can barely form a coherant thought. I mostly just want to lie around and space out to my Studio One reggae compilations. This is a selection from the Studio One DJ’s comp, which collects some of the finest proto-hip hop toasting recorded at Studio One in the 70s. “Street Doctor” is a variation of “Sidewalk Doctor,” which itself was a modified version of Marlena Shaw’s “Woman of the Ghetto.” Prince Francis’ vocal emphasizes the track’s hypnotic quality and plays up its tense, stop-start rhythms. (Click here to buy it from Soul Jazz.)

Yuka Honda “I Dream About You” – This song features Miho Hatori on lead vocals, so it is essentially a Cibo Matto track that just happened to be on Yuka Honda’s new solo album. If you’re familiar with Cibo Matto, then this track won’t be a huge surprise – it is basically the same sort of “urban” sex pop that the band excelled at in the 90s, but with an extra dash of sexual ambiguity. (Click here to buy it from Amazon.)

For some strange reason, the Bloggies have opted to eliminate its “best music blog” category the very same year that music blogs have blown up and become a notable force for innovation in the blogging world. Weird. You can still nominate music sites in the apples-and-oranges “best entertainment site” category (and other categories such as group blog, American blog, blog of the year, etc), but whatever.