New Jersey Drive

Jackers!

To the person or persons who jimmied my locks, blew out my windows, and straight-up ransacked my car on Springfield Avenue:

Thank you for demonstrating excellent musical taste. Joke’s on you.

Seriously – this isn’t an attempt to ironize myself out of the fact that my car got run while I was up the block speaking about brotherhood, community empowerment, and hope. It just happens that I have a way better anti-theft system than the alarm that didn’t go off when someone crowbarred my door handles. It’s a sophisticated two-part system:

I always keep my money stacks where my pockets at, and

I’m really disorganized when it comes to filing CDs while driving.

When I left my car around noon, I had two folders of CDs and a dozen jewel cases. When I got back at two, I had two folders of CDs (now in the trunk) and ten jewel cases. The two purloined cases? Wu-Tang Forever and 8 Diagrams, one of which – the one not named 8 Diagrams – I regularly foist on my friends with religious zeal.

Now, I’m assuming, because literally every compartment, bag, folder, and book in my car was rifled through and it would have been really easy to filch 60 CDs at once, that these two cases were taken for a very specific reason, namely, the bandit or bandits’ love for Wu Tang. Sorry, my sticky fingered friend(s), but Forever Disc 1 was in my Big Doe Rehab case (which was back in the Canine Crib, collecting dust, BTW), Forever Disc 2 was in my King Sunny Ade Juju Music case, and 8 Diagrams was in the disc player in my helicopter. As best I can tell, whoever jacked my car made off with Apparat’s Walls and Stars’ Heart, two albums I wish I had listened to a bit more, but would never accept in a trade for the collected works of Shaolin’s righteous wax chaperones.

Car talk aside, I've got two new items for this month -- an exclusive review of One Be Lo's The R.E.B.I.R.T.H. and (finally) Part II of "America's Most Policed Art Form," courtesy of the good folks at PopMatters. Enjoy.