this is a request mr radio man, just one desire from a hip-hop fan. what has "east coast rap roots, funk influences, syncopated beats, duo rapping and the heavy use of slang?" yes, that's right, gangstarr. thanks to a heads up from superlum, i fiddled around with pandora today and i was amazed. my life changed, seriously. pandora is a web service that lets you find music that you like based on what you already like, and then they play it for you. sounds ridiculously great right?

other sites let you rate certain songs and they'll select upcoming songs based on those selections, but as far as i know, pandora is the only service that analyzes a song and then matches up that song's criteria -- thanks to the music genome project -- to recommend additional songs. so it's not like "if you like nelly you'll like lil'jon" or whatever, it's matching up the songs based on "has similar east coast rap roots, the heavy use of chordal patterning, a tight kick sond, barebones arranging and an electric bass riff" type stuff. is this crazy or what? heck, it's fun just to see what they say when they break down the songs. i didn't even know that i liked "melodic part writing and busy synth hat." but i do!

when i put in gangstarr as my first selection, pandora played a gangstarr track, "skills," and then it started to play other songs. you can thumbs up or thumbs down the songs to give pandora a better idea of what you want to be listening to. the first selection pandora made for me after the gangstarr track was "proceed (live)" by the roots, one of my all time favorites. i was hooked. the next few selections gave me songs that i already loved or introduced me to artists that i didn't even know i loved yet:

radioactive - large professor
wherever you are - mic geronimo
lyrics to go (tumblin' dice remix) - tribe
moving to my beat - j boogie
crush on you - mr cheeks
6th sense - common
no comparison - 9th wonder & buckshot
all over again - raekwon
the way you do it - little brother
incredible - krumb snatcha
remind my soul - akrobatik
the movement - inspectah deck
bluebird - one self

by the time digable and dj jazzy jeff rolled around i was already aim-ing and emailing everyone to try pandora out. i'm in heaven. the only "bad" song that pandora recommended me was "balla babyz" by chingy, but i can forgive that since i started adding in criteria other than gangstarr. after i dialed it back to just gangstarr, pandora didn't miss. not once.

and because i didn't want to be unscientific, i started a new station and tried out pm dawn, to some mixed results. apparently pm dawn -- "hip hop roots, rap influcences, r&b influences, mild rhythmic syncopation and acoustic rhythm piano" -- is similar to marques houston, n'sync, mariah carey and brian mcknight. not exactly what i was looking for. but who am i to argue? this pandora thing is amazing -- plus they have an interesting blog. go try it out like right now.

rejoice people, rejoice!