Photo: BELIZAIRE/AFP/Getty

I recently left Rolling Stone after three years as a writer for the magazine. In that time, I had the opportunity to meet and interview some of the most talented and important artists of our time and become a small part of the legacy of one of America's most iconic magazines. Upon reflection, I've come up with five highlights of my time at RS — and a dishonorable mention that I can't hold onto any longer…

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In three years at Rolling Stone, I’ve done interviews with lots of musicians. The best of them usually end up in the magazine, but some gems occasionally fall through the cracks.

In June, 2006, I went to a show at BB King Blues Club featuring two true legends of Mississippi Delta blues, Robert "Junior" Lockwood and David "Honeyboy" Edwards. Both were 91 years old at the time and contemporaries of Robert Johnson: Lockwood learned how to play guitar from Johnson, who lived with his mother for ten years, and, at some point, Lockwood added the "Junior" to his name to emphasize the connection. Edwards was a colleague and friend of Johnson's who was there on the night in 1938 when the iconic bluesman — who sold his soul to the devil to play guitar so well — was poisoned for sleeping with another man's wife.

The interviews were fascinating and we hoped to make them into a piece about these two giants in the history of American music still touring the country in their 90s. As often happens, the piece was pushed back a few times to make room for more breaking news and, at some point, it fell off our radar. When Lockwood died in late 2006, we were able to use some of the interview with him in our obituary. But the Honeyboy Edwards interview never ran at all. I was looking through old transcripts recently and realized that some of this stuff is too fascinating — and historically important — to exist only as a Word file on my hard drive. So here it is.

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The Rolling Stone that comes out this week includes a big "Best of Rock" package, in which we call out the best metal band (Mastodon), best festival (Bonnaroo) and best radio station (Indie 103), among other superlatives. I worked on a piece that called out Baltimore (my hometown) as the best scene. This involved a 24-hour club-hopping tour of the city with awesome photographer Josh Rothstein. We hit rock clubs like Ottobar and Talking Head, the underground Floristree performance space and late-night diners Paper Moon and Golden West, but the most memorable moment was the hour Josh, Jason Urick of local band WZT Hearts and I spent trying to carry an old, drunk and angry (and heavy!) man we found face-down on the sidewalk to his house. Baltimore rocks!

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We get a lot of stuff at the office. Much of it is awesome: tons of CDs, t-shirts, posters — even the occasional $40,000 stereo. Last year, I got sent a spray can of Diddy’s fragrance, Unforgivable. I have kept it on my desk ever since, mostly because I think the name is hysterical. Is he serious with that? Do you want to smell "unforgivable"? As it turns out, Unforgivable smells unforgivably bad. One night, I jokingly sprayed some at a colleague to ward him off. He almost threw up. For hours thereafter, people would walk by my office, assume a horrified expression, and ask where that awful odor was coming from. At this point, it's like mace. If someone pisses me off, I just hold up the can as a threat and they'll do anything I say. Thanks Diddy. You're the man.

Who would have thought that so soon after that crazy clip of Filipino prisoners recreating Jacko's "Thriller" video surfaced, there would be something else to file in the "Asians Reenacting Pop History" folder? This time it's the Japanese, and they're taking on the "We Are the World" video, complete with blackface, thick accents, and one very chubby Stevie Wonder.