On the walkman this morning: Master P – “MP Da Last Don” (1998). An impulse buy in a charity shop at the weekend. Double CD of low-down dirty hip hop for a fiver. Sorta southern G-Funk business, excellent production. The whole rough beats vs smooth strings and synths dynamic. I’m no expert on this stuff, though.

Obviously the lyrics throw up the usual misgivings, but are done pretty artfully and with humour. The best gangsta tracks are always the ones where they talk about the regret of ending up that way, being forced into a corner. (“The ghetto got me crazy, but there’s more to life than bitches, weed and mercedes”).

Got me thinking about how some people (liberals? can I call them that?) expect those on the bottom of the pile to be hyper-conscious and not want materialistic bling bling stuff, but channel their energies into great art or revolutionary politics.

Yeah right. I was at a training course last week and everyone seemed pretty well off, but when it came to doing a talk on your “vision”, people were still banging on about wanting enormous houses and expensive cars.

Plus Master P comes in with some incredibly atonal “huuuuuugh”s on loads of the tracks, which reminds me of U Roy.