I asked Carter a question I also asked McCaw ("the expats see you right enough" – a statement proved correct five or six times on the short walk to Wall Street) and the 6ft 8in Whitelock ("as a tall fella, I'll always be spotted"): What's it like to walk about a city and not be recognised by every passerby?
Rock'n'Roll Train, the album opener, kicks off with a classic AC/DC riff: lively, flab-free guitars, drums like a locomotive and then Brian Johnson's distinctive howl, which sounds, even for a fella nearly as old as my dad, every bit as urgent and on its game as anything else in music at the moment.
Blakroc - Ain't Nothing Like You (Hoochie Coo) (From XXL) Trumpets and ticker tape at the ready please, as Roc-A-Fella executive Damon Dash returns from the cultural wasteland.
A spokesman for the Island Def Jam Music Group said: "All of us at Roc-a-Fella as well as Cam'ron's family and friends are fully behind him.
The opposing view could be summarized as "I know a fella told me they gave him adrenalin right in his heart, hear?, and that means the old alligator is in extremis, y'unnerstand?" On my first evening in New Orleans, I received forty-two other prognoses in between.
West first gained prominence as a producer for Roc-A-Fella Records; he achieved recognition for his work on rapper Jay-Z's The Blueprint (2001), as well as hit singles for musical artists including Alicia Keys, Ludacris, and Janet Jackson.
In 2002, after much begging and pleading — which he recounts in a bizarre eight-minute monologue at the end of "Dropout" — he persuaded Jay-Z to sign him to his Roc-A-Fella label as a rapper.
"Dynasty" is a tale of deceit and revenge that focuses on a scrappy magazine writer (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) whose editor sends him to Roc-A-Fella Records as an undercover reporter to write about the seedy underbelly of hip-hop.
Atop it all is Uncle Murda — formerly known as Uncle Murder, onetime D-lister on Jay-Z's Roc-A-Fella Records — who sounds as if he's unburdening himself of years of resentment.
He was signed to Roc-A-Fella in 2000 as a producer, breaking out by handling the bulk of beat-making on Jay Z's instant classic The Blueprint in 2001.
