Music: Lyric Reality, With A Smile

Beck draws on rap, soul and a sense of humor

Talking to folk/rock/hip-hop performer Beck is like walking behind the food cart on an airplane. You just have to get in line and wait till it gets where it's going. Beck answers in digressive monologues that so completely exhaust a question that, by the end, you almost forget what the question was. Ask him about the comparisons his music has drawn to Bob Dylan's, and he replies, "I never really identified with him as a person... His art and music, they're undeniable, but... I'm probably more influenced by Leonard Cohen and Ramblin' Jack Elliott and other folk people than Dylan. I...

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