Will Hermes revisits the importance of the Incredible Bongo Band for the NYTimes. Link

THIS is a story about a nearly forgotten album and the birth of hip-hop music. Like many good hip-hop tales, and pop yarns in general, it involves unlikely characters rising from obscurity and is colored with creative passion, violence, drugs, thievery, paydays and paybacks.

It’s a story of a Bronx D.J. making his name with a record that began as the soundtrack for a B-movie called “The Thing With Two Heads.” And it suggests that the two most important drummers in rap history might be a guy who spent his career touring behind Neil Diamond and another who played with John Lennon and Eric Clapton before stabbing his mother to death and being committed to a mental hospital.