It surprises me that the hip-hop/blues highway paved by G Love doesn't go both ways. Love's music has brought countless hip-hop and pop fans to the blues. And we're not just talking the sweet-home-B.B.-Ray Vaughan-House Of Blues crap neither; we're talking deep-dish delta here. Yet at his positively packed show at Water Street Music Hall April 8, I didn't see a lot of my blues brethren. And I know they would have dug it too.

I've probably led people to believe that I don't like hip-hop, but that's not entirely true. Hip-hop ain't nothin' but a beat, and a beat can do no wrong. And naturally, when shoehorned with what I love, it's utterly righteous. Love mixed both of his main musical strains equally - and unequally - breaking into full-on raps one minute, then getting all Little Walter on us the next. He pulled stuff off my favorite of his records, "The Hustle."

Gripping his green Gretsch with a grin, Love drove the crowd wild in a kind of musical detente that brought me to something I thought was suspicious of, and the kids in the crowd to something nutritious.