"That album! Oh man. Supa Dupa Fly was such a jam but Missy was just a creative fucking force when Da Real World came out. I remember she looked like Lee Bowery and her skin was painted true black, her eyebrows up to her forehead, back when videos could still be incredible videos. It was so top-of-the-line, Timbaland and Missy collaborating, and I felt like it was her time to shine as a writer and as a producer. It set the tone of that time. I was obsessed with it. 'Hot Boyz'? It is hit after hit. 'She's A Bitch'? What a jam? That was the video. She was so innovative and ahead of her fucking time. Everybody was on that, it was a family affair, but she is a genre all of her own. She is her own thing. Nobody is like Missy. She is one of those people where I'm like, sexism is alive, because if she was a man, she would be getting all of these crazy props. She's so incredible, and so underrated. Her harmonies are unbeatable. Un. Beatable. She's a maestro, a genius, a music nerd, an absolute culture nerd. And a style nerd. She's just such an icon. She was cool too. She's powerful. She is performance art, and that wasn't in hip hop at that time. And it certainly wasn't in female hip hop. The thing about Lil' Kim was that she sold sexuality and she did it so well, like no one is Lil' Kim, but Missy wasn't selling conventional sexuality, she wasn't selling female sensuality, that wasn't what she was doing, and I relate to that as a person who is big and a person who isn't attracted to conventional things. I like the weirdness, I like the things that stick out, I like things to look a little clowny, or look a little crazy and that's why she's such an icon. Same with Outkast. I think Southerners are just naturally weirder. Look at Lil' Wayne, Missy, Timberland, Outkast, Neptunes, all of those are Southerners so they're different. A different breed of rapper."

"This song is really important. I fell in love with it when it was released about ten years ago and we played it at our wedding. It’s really bittersweet, about wishing someone you’ve left high and dry the best of luck, wondering what went wrong and hoping that wherever they are, they’re going to find a path and be OK. There’s a lot of question marks in the song and it’s absolutely beautiful. I think I heard it on a radio station in Los Angeles, it didn’t get Top 40 radio play but one of the public access stations, KCRW plays a lot of new music. It struck me as a beautifully well-crafted song and again it’s a song I wish I’d written. He hit the nail on the head, there’s a lot of questioning going on, regret and searching within yourself, trying to reconcile what happened and trying to move forward. We did play a few upbeat songs at the wedding post the ceremony itself at the reception, but my wife and I also wanted to play some songs that meant something to us. Some of those songs are dark and sad, but sometimes those kind of songs make me feel good. We played ‘Bittersweet Symphony’ as we came up to the altar, it was in a park, so it wasn’t really an altar, it was a non-religious wedding. We left the spot where we got married and played this as we walked up to the reception, with these outdoor tables for us and our friends to hang out. Some people might have thought it was an odd choice, but I was deeply moved by it and still am when I hear that song. This song moves me to tears every time I hear it, I swear to God. It’s probably in my top ten songs of all time. I have a list on my Mac that I call my ‘bummer songs’, because when I listen to bummer songs they make me feel good for some reason and this is the first song on the list."

"We played with the line-up from this album at 2007's All Tomorrow's Parties. We were allowed to curate a day and we brought them over. That record A Minute To Pray, A Second To Die just got reissued on Superior Viaduct and they played a couple of shows in California. Danny Bland - a guy I knew from way back from the band Cat Butt, works very closely for Dave Alvin from Flesh Eaters [and The Blasters] - asked me if they came to Seattle, would we want to play with them and I was like: "Fuck yeah!" They were great man. They exceeded expectations I think and there were a lot of people at the show who were probably not familiar with the record but were familiar with the guys. They're like "we like The Blasters, we like X" but it's a totally different beast to those bands. It's got more of a Captain Beefheart, early Dr. John feel to it with the marimbas on the record, the Steve Berlin sax (another record with sax!). It was kind of an anomaly at the time. It was part of the punk scene but it wasn't a punk record. There was this thing at the time that I confused it with at first - bands like 45 Grave and Christian Death and the Dance With Me-era TSOL where everything was kind of getting satanic. I initially lumped it in with that stuff but it's so much better and further ahead of the game than that. The record for me was kind of a slow burn. I worked in a radio station and when it came in I put it on a cassette with a more normal hardcore band on the other side. I eventually found myself fast-forwarding through the hardcore side and just listening to A Minute To Pray, A Second To Die over and over again. It wasn't like initially "this is great!", it was more like "this is weird!" to a 19-year-old. Chris Desjardins' lyrics are awesome and dense and intense and pretty much like Nick Cave's. Both those guys - they don't write short, concise pop songs."