[A] Since I receive very few promo CDs or DLs, Spotify is how I get to hear all the albums I don't have in my possession--a tiny proportion of the total available, of course, but hundreds a month. After multiple plays I decide which ones sound good enough to review and eventually buy, preferably as physicals, because for various reasons technological, psychological, and journalistic I prefer to review physicals--those I'm compelled to merely download I then burn. The Spotify songs included with the CG, which play at full length for readers who are Spotify subscribers and 30 seconds for those who aren't, leaves what readers then do with these albums up to them. I hope they buy some themselves, which is why I almost never publish pre-release reviews. But I have no control over that.

[A] Just what I've always wanted--a stupid feud between two public figures I'm supposed to care about and don't. As I explained several years ago when a question alerted me to Fantano's existence, I'm too busy listening to music--an oldish hip-hop album that seems destined for a CG review as I write, but definitely not one by Drake, who's bored me for many years now--to listen to podcasts much less album reviews much less Fantano's album reviews. Instead I read, and from what I read Drake's DMs are considerably less than hateful while his need to call attention to a reviewer he doesn't like is considerably more than stupid because it enhances the critic's fame. Fantano is right to make this point while milking Drake's attention for all it's worth. But he's not anything close to right to call correspondents he doesn't like "thirsty bitches" because it's vile to use "bitch" as an insult unless you're female yourself, at which point my male judgment becomes pretty much irrelevant.

[A] There are no parlor games anymore because there are no parlors. Instead there are internet timesucks, a category that includes neither your musical musings nor, I hope, my response. And for sure I've got one. Much as I admire Sly and Robbie especially, your first impulse was your best impulse. The winner is Motown's Funk Brothers hands down, though it must be said that they benefited immeasurably from their workmates: not just world-class vocalists the Temptations, Diana Ross, Marvin Gaye, and Smokey Robinson, to reference just the top tier, but extraordinary songwriters and producers, starting with Holland-Dozier-Holland of course but much as you might want to don't forget Berry Gordy, and I could go on. In my opinion none of the others you name are quite in their league, although Hi Rhythm with Al Green on board come close and L.A.'s Wrecking Crew also belongs in the mix (as indeed might the mid-'60s Rolling Stones). In this connection I highly recommend the 2019 Showtime documentary Hitsville: The Making of Motown, where I learned not only that drummer Benny Benjamin OD'd in 1968 and that nonpareil bassist James Jamerson, whose every lick Paul McCartney committed to memory and good for him, moved to L.A. in 1972 but never found his footing there. Race couldn't have helped, although the wondrous New Orleans drummer Earl Palmer did more than OK on the same scene. Neither could alcohol: Jamerson died of cirrhosis of the liver in 1983.

[A] If you've really become a rap atheist then you've bowed out of the game. I mean, I have my doubts about most trap-identified contemporary hip-hop myself, but none whatsoever about Jay-Z, Eminem, pre-megalomaniac Kanye West, or Kendrick Lamar: unmistakably great and singular artists all, with many lessers making excellent and individually distinguished music in their wake, often off on the alt side (Homeboy Sandman, R.A.P. Ferreira). In alt-rock, meanwhile, the rise of the female factor has been a tremendous shot in the arm: Big Thief, Sad13, Chai, Illuminati Hotties, the Paranoid Style, Dry Cleaning, Wet Leg, I could go on, not always formally sui generis (though the first three sure are) but each markedly different and each imbued with a sense of destiny that comes out in the sound. Plus stuff that's going on in dance music that for a record nerd like me and perhaps you is too, as I like to say, site-specific, but as Beyonce likes to say is grist for the mill. Meanwhile try Phelimuncasi or DJ Maphorisa over in South Africa. Never heard anything much like 'em before.

[A] The Essential Britney Spears is a three-CD set that came out during a twixt-CGs hiatus in 2014. I don't own it and have no desire ever to hear it; I mean, it's three CDs. As elsewhere noted, I seldom think the word "bitch" is funny or cool or ironic or whatever you believe it to be in this context. I suggest abjuring it in perpetuity. [Correction: it seems to be a two-CD set. I still don't feel I need to hear it.]

[A] Because Johnny himself was a right-winger and right-wingers lie about everything. Obviously the vast majority of punks who had politics were lefties--to choose the most obvious, the Clash, the Dead Kennedys, riot grrrl, on and on and on. You are aware, right, that Joey wrote "The KKK Took My Baby Away" about Johnny?