Once and Future Wise Guys Expand the Nature of Hip Hop.

New York Times reporter John Darnton. This past Sunday, Monday and Tuesday, Darnton published a series of articles in the Times about the current state of Africa. He was the Times' Africa correspondent in the 70s. This 3-part series is his return to see how conditions have changed. He reports that living standards have declined far below the rest of the world, with most African countries in economic turmoil, replete with famine, war and drought. He says the World Bank has become the new superpower of Africa with the post-cold war pullout of the U.S. and Russia.

Singer-songwriter-poet-performance artist Maggie Estep. Estep calls herself "an angry, sweaty girl." As a teenager, she settled in New York City, and she's been in rock bands since the age of 17. Her current back-up band is called "I love Everybody." She was the cover girl on the February 1994 issue of "High Times" magazine; the article inside called her "the leader of the spoken word pack." She recently had a sold-out one-woman show at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe in Manhattan's Lower East Side. Her debut album is called "No More Mr.