THIS has great conscious lyrics and brilliant music. It's very powerful and filled with black consciousness... in the same way Marvin Gaye's What's Going On? was conscious. I love (Nas') Hip Hop Is Dead too. Nas is full of drama. He's always picking fights and dissing other rappers and I think he revived his career by dissing Jay-Z. Nas was going to call the album Nigger but they wouldn't let him. He went on the Grammys and talked about trying to reappropriate the word. It's like what Lenny Bruce used to do in his sketches about how certain words are only bad because people say they are.

Forever Changes - Love (1967)

This is a classic album. It has a unique quality. No one else has ever come near it for the ambition and the songs. It's LA music, like The Doors. I love music from the west coast of America and this is totally West Coast. It's the time and the ambition and place. I saw Arthur Lee, the bandleader play twice. Once in 1996 in London and again in Melbourne in 2005. He died the next year. His lyrics are genius and spooky and the music has all these weird baroque Hollywood and latin touches and mariachi horns. It's incredible. Lee went to prison for 10 years or something on a ''three strikes and you're out'' policy and when he got out, he went to the UK and was given an award for his contribution to music. That kinda sums up his career.

New Orleans Suite - Duke Ellington (1970)

I HAVE tons of Duke's albums. This is a late period concept album and is the last with his great sax player, Johnny Hodges. I love his tone and I love anything by the Duke. He had 16 of the greatest players ever in his band for 40 years. I can't help but be impressed by his body of work. It spreads across half of the 20th century. This is all about New Orleans and it's got these funeral march kind of chords. This big band stuff, I love it all.

Marcus Garvey - Burning Spear (1975)

THIS is mystic reggae from the mid-70s. Anything by Winston Rodney aka Burning Spear is wonderful. I have the CD which also has Garvey's Ghost, the dub versions of all the tracks. He is a master of chanting, deep throbbing chants which befog your mind. He is deep and mystic. This period of reggae is very committed and was a wonderful product of a post-colonial situation.