The Louisiana rapper, finally unincarcerated, leaks hip-hop's most blatant James Brown tribute in decades – fronting what sounds like a full funk band. Riding chicken-scratch guitar vamps, Mystikal mimics awed white folks, confl ates "Brick House" with Seventies porn, remembers Abbott and Costello, rumbles through Ali's jungle, and climaxes saying it proud: a lesson in rap's prehistory.

“Help Me”

Joni Mitchell wrote and recorded this song for her album Court and Spark, but she had to switch from her regular band to make the song sound exactly the way she wanted. "I had attempted to play my music with rock & roll players," she told Rolling Stone. "They’d laugh, 'Awww, isn't that cute? She's trying to teach us how to play.'" Mitchell switched to a jazz band, Tom Scott’s L.A. Express, and scored the biggest hit of her career in the process.