LCD Soundsystem mastermind James Murphy will soon be marketing his own espresso blend, and he probably blazed up a blammo batch of it for this zippy future-freak soul summit. Putting this many visionary types in one studio could’ve made for a mess, but they lock in for a three-man weave – like the Bird-McHale-Parish of avant-R&B. Damon Albarn lays down a double-time funk charge and lyrical patter about being a "pale imitator of a boy in the sky," while Murphy unspools tweak-y falsetto silliness and Andre 3000 drops a devastating freestyle – "I’m an Outkast but you’re into me/Summer got mad 'cause winter blew me" – before taking us to the rivers of Mars like a sweetly zonked Al Green. The comedown from this must've been brutal.

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• Photos: Random Notes

“Baby Got Back”

While watching a Budweiser commercial during the Super Bowl, Sir Mix-a-Lot thought the skinny female models in the ad didn’t represent reality. So he wrote this ode to ample bottoms, featuring its famous to-the-point lyric: “I like big butts and I cannot lie.” MTV banished the video, featuring shaking booties and sexually suggestive fruit, to 9 p.m. or later. “I thought my career was over,” he told Rolling Stone. “Then I called Rick Rubin, and I told him the video was banned, and he was like, 'Great!' We sold another 2 million records.”