Today we’re writing “Loose Links” with a heavy heart, as the Dallas Mavericks kicked our beloved Los Angeles Lakers in the teeth yesterday. We’re not only sad that the Lakers lost, it’s just that this 4-0 sweep guarantees that we’ll be hearing Ron Artest rap a lot sooner than we wanted to…sigh. Say Queensbridge, anyone? On a more positive note, the usual collection of randomly interesting clips from the Internet are cheering us up as the weekly grind continues.

“When in Rome…”

It’s easy to think of Brian “Danger Mouse” Burton as the dude who dresses in weird costumes and makes awesome music with Cee-Lo. But the Atlanta native was putting it down many years before he began donning strange costumes. As 2009’s Dark Night of the Soul proved, Danger Mouse has a diverse palette, and he further proves that fact by working with Daniele Luppi for a collection of surviving performers of classic ‘60s and ’70s Ennio Morricone scores and pairing them up with modern artists like Norah Jones and Jack White. It’s just as random as it sounds, but you can preview the full Rome album at the NPR site.

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Listen to Danger Mouse And Daniele Luppi, “Rome”

“More steel than Pittsburgh…”

Regardless of how you feel about the album Rolling Papers, 2010-2011 was the period Wiz Khalifa saw himself break through to the mainstream’s collective consciousness. Our brethren at Complex.com put together an all-inclusive rundown of how Wiz’s number one album came together. Read it, and you’ll get accounts of everything from Wiz testing out “Hopes And Dreams” at a strip club to how an intoxicated drive through his hometown turned into the track “When I’m Gone.”

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Read “The Making of Wiz Khalifa’s ‘Rolling Papers’”

“All around the world, same song…”

Do you ever notice how no matter what state you’re in the radio stations all play the same thing? You can talk all you want to about how Clear Channel owns pretty much every station, but the homogenization of terrestrial radio has also impacted the charts. Al Shipley of The Village Voice has an interesting article on how urban radio has essentially been doing its own thing regardless of what’s going on with Billboard’s “Hot 100” chart.

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Read Radio Hits One: The Disappearing Urban Crossover Hit Says “Look At Me Now”