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I am obsessed with the 1980 Thames documentary series by Kevin Brownlow about the early days of Hollywood, just called "Hollywood". You can find it on archive.org but it hasn't been legitimately released for forty years. The remarkable thing about it is that so many people from those early days were still alive to talk about it in 1980! And the stories they have to tell are hair raising.

I'll use any excuse to talk about it. The reason I bring it up here today is because many interviewees mentioned that silent cinema was international in a way that the "talkies" weren't, and indeed in a way few dramatic forms were before it. It was easy to take your film made in the US, and swap out the inter-titles for another language. And so the new art of cinema was built across many nations of creators and audiences.

Sit back children and listen to Kool Keith vivisect a bunch of rappers you haven't heard since 1992