Which is to say, it’s still a pretty good video.

Here’s a video for the lead single, Maybe So, Maybe No. It features a bunch of iconic LA spots, from Venice Beach to the Santa Monica skate park to Crane’s Tavern in Hollywood.

Listen to the full song here.

The second track, called Dimethyltryptamine, is a heavy hitter, politically and visually. Be warned there is some disturbing imagery.

I keep coming back to K’Naan’s second album, Troubadour, as a place to remember why music is made in the first place – to tell stories. The song “Fatima” was playing on repeat in my head when the alarm/call from the photo lab/text from my sister all went off at the same time. There’s no video, but here is a decent version of the track.

Also, if you have 45 minutes to kill, watch this fascinating and moving in-studio performance/interview on KCRW:

First, I present “Pass the Mic”, from the classic record Check Your Head, which I guess was re-released this year. This is an album that signaled the Beasties’ full shift from tongue-in-cheek punk rockers to crossover act to full time rappers, and was the prototype for all white-guy rap to come. It’s hard to understate the effect this album had on the musical tastes of my youth, and I imagine the youth of suburbs all over the country.

And now the present day Beasties, performing with The Roots on Jimmy Fallon’s Late Show, with What Cha Want, from the same album. Check out the gray hair, the bulging bellies, the not-quite-grasshopper-like moves.

Residents of any of the cities where Bootie events go down will likely be pretty familiar with the tunes, which are mainly composed of this year’s pop sensations combined with yesteryear’s funkiest or best-known tracks. These come off the dancefloors and onto wax in Best of Bootie 2008.

Some of the more obvious entries include the A+B mash of The Police’s “Roxanne” and The Bee Gees’ “You Should be Dancing”, by DJ Zebra, and the tongue-literally-poking-through-the-cheek irony of Divide & Kreate’s “Until It Talks”, a combination of Coldplay and Metallica tracks.

But the award for creativity most definitely goes to SF’s DJ Earworm, who mixes not two, not five, but sixteen different artists (Rihanna vs. Kardinal Offishall vs. Akon vs. Ne-Yo vs. Estelle vs. Pussycat Dolls vs. Leona Lewis vs. Danity Kane vs. Madonna vs. Timbaland vs. Justin Timberlake vs. Lupe Fiasco vs. Matthew Santos vs. Britney Spears vs. Flo-Rida vs. T-Pain) to create “No More Gas”. Bordering dangerously on the Girltalk-dominated sub-genre (or is it a completely new one?) of extreme mashups, this is a whole bunch of song fragments, choruses and other bits that somehow got stuck in your head over the year. No need to go back to all those (mostly) bad originals, now you have them all in one track! It’s like a “Best of” list all in itself.

Anyway, as always with the Bootie compilations, this one is pre-mixed for your continuous listening and dancing pleasure. Many thanks to A+D for keeping the Bootie series going and here’s looking forward to a mash-terful 2009.

Click the photo above to go to the Bootie site and peruse the album, or just click HERE for the full zipped download, complete with cover art!