Great american songbook

Livestream-hopping is just as irritating as being at a real festival

The ghost of Samuel Beckett oversaw the Hip Hop Loves NY livestream last Thursday night. Time and time again its host, the veteran hip-hop TV presenter Ralph McDaniels — known to all his guests, unnervingly, as ‘Uncle Ralph’ — tried to connect to some Golden Age legend. Time and time again, his attempts at a straightforward interview went wrong. We saw Uncle Ralph, on one half of the screen, ask a question about Covid-19, nod along to the answer, then say, ‘Thank you, doctor.’ But we didn’t have a doctor on screen, or on our audio. We had Ice T. ‘I ain’t no doctor,’ Ice-T said. Cut to Nas. But