As the foundation of Lou Reed's "Walk on the Wild Side" glides across the stereo, we hear Q-Tip and Phife Dawg shuffle into the picture, gibbering away as though they were in The Goon Show. And suddenly – as if from nowhere – "Can I Kick It?" is in full view. A Tribe Called Quest's jazz-rap fusions can still play all night, moving from hotel lobby to shebeen to the iPad with ease, and you can dip in and out of their tunes without any great shock to the system. With laidback loops involving Cannonball Adderley, Roy Ayers, the Average White Band and the Rotary Connection, ATCQ invented a new kind of hip-hop, a decade after the first kind.

Cheery property expert-cum-TV homemaker Kirsty Allsopp was at Thursday's Hodder dinner at Café de Paris to promote the new paperback edition of Kirstie's Homemade Home. Deciding, however, that the subject of craft would yield few gags, she chose to recount a racy anecdote from her youth.

If you thought Pharrell had jumped the shark, Nothing will come as something of a shock.

Pharrell Williams explained in a recent interview that N*E*R*D's latest album is intended to reflect an era when "there's a lot of war... the economy sucks, [but] girls are still beautiful", which pretty much covers most of the ground a hip-hop/rock act like his should.

In 2008, Converse roped in Julian Casablancas, Santogold and Pharrell to promote their shoes via a one-off single. As far as music/commercial tie-ins go, it was probably one of the more reasonable marriages, considering Converse's long-storied relationship with rock music.

Straight outta Florida, Hong Kong, Paris and the International Ruling Class in general, rich girl Anna-Catherine Hartley makes for an unlikely gangsta rapper, but that’s a huge part of Uffie’s appeal.

Recently appointed creative chairman of Priority Records, Snoop is, in his words, "tha Dogg Father" of the West Coast rap scene.

You might have had Busta Rhymes pegged as an outdated Nineties relic, but if that's true, nobody's told the American hip hop community.