Today is about rappers

Most people who hear 'Cavern' think of Grandmaster Flash's 'White Lines.'

Many probably think of Big Audio Dynamite's first single 'The Bottom Line.'

A smaller, sadder group (guilty!) think LL Cool J's 'Something Like A Phenomenon.'

The original song is by a New York band called Liquid, Liquid, that was part of a brief post-punk minimalist disco movement cunningly called "No Wave."

The group's bass player, Richard McGuire, also created the amazing video, a fabulous piece of animation, that I am sure will be enjoyed by Moistwork's Shadow Minister for Bogan Affairs (Lesser Oceania), Al MacInnes.

Also Fabulous, in a very different way, is the homoaerobic video for 'White Lines', directed by a very young Spike Lee, and starring an even younger Laurence Fishburne.

And finally, the video to the Duran Duran coverof 'White Lines', for which they brought on board GMF and Melly Mel in a 'Walk This Way'-esque revival.

Spike Lee didn't direct the Stop The Madness anti-drug video, but it appears they used the same talent agency, "Colorful Homies! Casting." It's a video you've got to see, with: David Hasselhoff, Kim Fields, Casey Kasem, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Boogaloo Shrimp, and Nancy Reagan (reading "Stop The Madness" off a lyrics sheet). It's a sort of urban We Are The World, with Tim Reid in the Geldof role. Anti-drug ads like this, and they are all like this, try to illustrate the personal evils of addiction, but end up illustrating the cultural evils that a drug user in 1985 was likely trying to escape.

La Toya Jackson shows up in the Stop The Madness video. It's a few years after she released her bland but enjoyable disco flop 'If You Feel The Funk'. Here is a video for the song created for/by the fansite Church Of La Toya.

Here are some pictures of a very young La Toya, before she walked into the plastic surgeon's office and demanded "I'll have the Asian Marmoset Supreme please."

And here's a nice one with brother Michael, before she challenged him to a nose-off.

The same year La Toya was shaking her rump to the funk, Sound On Sound Productions were doing the hump.

There is certainly nothing "incredible" about the rapping in this song, but the band makes up for it with sprawling enthusiasm and a big, oft-sampled bassline.

I couldn't find a video for this song. But if there is one, it couldn't be better than THIS.