Arthur Russell, too fast for Vin Diesel

My friend Gary Lucas has pos­ted an archiv­al tape of an abort­ive record­ing ses­sion fea­tur­ing the future Vin Diesel and the beats of the late latter-day cult fig­ure (and all-the-time geni­us) Arthur Russell. Yes, my friends, it really happened, and you can now hear over three minutes of the ses­sion going down. As Gary notes, Russell’s tricky beat keeps drop­ping out, as it were, from under Diesel, and the fledgling rap­per has a bit of a hard time with it. In fair­ness to Diesel, it’s a con­struc­tion that would provide all but the most rhyth­mic­ally soph­ist­ic­ated emcees a chal­lenge. In fur­ther fair­ness to Diesel, as far as his timbre and deliv­ery are con­cerned, I, and prob­ably you, have heard a lot worse. Still in all it’s prob­ably bet­ter for every­one (except­ing Jeffrey Wells), that Le Dieseldorf ended up where he did. Have a listen here.