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.