Crib Notes

Every week the New York Times puts someone in its editorial department in the hot seat to take questions from readers. This week, jazz and pop music critic Ben Ratliff drew the short straw. He’s answering questions emailed to askthetimes@nytimes.com through Friday.

Here’s a sample:

Q. Now that Barack Obama has said there will be jazz in the White House — does that mean we’re at the end of stupid and the beginning of smart?

— James Brinsfield

A. I think that we tend to look at our president and think, this is us. If that this-is-us perception includes President-elect Obama’s interest in John Coltrane, say, it might be a meaningful thing. If he installed a “secretary of culture” who knew a lot about jazz and Afro-Latin music, there might actually be concrete results.

I don’t know yet what Mr. Obama is going to do for jazz. I thought it was clever that after his acceptance speech he used one of the same Brooks & Dunn country songs (”Only in America”) that George W. Bush had used on the campaign trail in 2004. Maybe that’s the jazz process: using an old song to new ends.

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The nation’s economic funk has inspired a bit of uplifting funk from Big Boi.

He discussed his mission to balance bangin’ beats and lyrics with social responsibility in the lead single, “Sumthin’s Gotta Give” (featuring Mary J. Blige), from his solo album Sir Lucious Leftfoot … Son of Chico Dusty, due in October.

Apparently, it echoes OutKast’s legacy of inspiring grooves so much that Big had a hard time dropping the plural pronouns (”us,” “we”) when discussing his solo project:

“I keep saying ‘we,’ even though it’s a solo album. Me and Dre are like brothers, man. I’m putting this solo disc out, and then we’re going to come back with the next OutKast record.”

Full story here.

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