Gerald Nicosia has spent a decade challenging the disposition of Jack Kerouac's $20 million literary estate. Along the way, he's annoyed most of what remains of the beat generation.
Over the next couple of weeks, Backbeat will feature some Top Ten lists from around the Village Voice Media chain. Click here for previous year-in-review coverage from Backbeat and VVM.
Picking the best folk and Americana records of the year isn't nearly as hard as discarding those great records that just didn't feel right stuck in the category. Releases by Calexico and DeVotchKa felt far too worldly to pigeonhole as folk or country, for instance, while Blitzen Trapper's fantastic Furr smells
The Bright Midnight Sampler: 14 Songs/8 Concerts (Bright Midnight Records/Rhino Handmade), Various Artists Stoned Immaculate: The Music of the Doors (Elektra)
​Time, aka Chris Steele, has been involved in the Denver hip-hop scene
for over a decade, and his current and future collaborators include Sole
of the Anticon collective, Talib Kweli, Drake, Kool Keith and C-Rayz
Walz. The snarkier hip-hop aficionados refer to the form Time writes
and performs as "alternative hip-hop" -- probably because it's as
musically daring and as experimental as its equivalent in the
underground rock scene. Time's lyrics are remarkable for their
literary quality, layers
