​Tonight, Voice contributor and hip-hop sommelier Ben Westhoff will read from Dirty South, his look at the populist rise of rap music from the southern states, at Williamsburg's Book Thug Nation. The book focuses on the bigger names to have emerged from the south, with chapters based around Big Boi and Andre 3000's creative tensions, Lil Wayne's sensational ascent to stardom, the Geto Boys' early days, and Soulja Boy's ability to use a laptop and two cellphones while eating McDonalds (page 237, rap scholars). Here are five prompts for the post-reading Q&A segment, should you want to start a dialogue with Westhoff.

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Savoir Adore's CD release party is tonight Friday, July 17 at Cameo Gallery 93 N. 6th St., Brooklyn, at 8pm. They're also playing Glasslands on Saturday, August 29.

Discussed: Timber nymphs, Blue Moon beer-bottle percussion, and the Miami Vice theme.

On paper, Savoir Adore epitomize everything irritatingly late-aughts hipster indie. They're privileged twenty-something Williamsburg residents with a moniker that doesn't actually mean anything in French, and are responsible for this terrifyingly twee video. But though you would expect a fantasy-pop group with an EP called The Adventures of Mr. Pumpernickel and the Girl with Animals in Her Throat to make you angry, their music is actually terrifically inspired and charmingly executed.

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If Auto-Tune hit its peak as a joke delivery device last week amidst the spectacle of a weirdly robotic Katie Couric involuntarily singing an "O Superman"-reminiscent lament for melting polar ice caps, it also hit its nadir at about the same time, when a tape surfaced of an Auto-Tuned Martin Luther King "singing" his epochal "I Have a Dream" speech. If there is a god, the internet's random desecration of one of the all-time great oratorical moments of the 20th century should finally put Auto-Tune-as-a-joke in the internet meme grave, hopefully never to rise again. As far as the larfs went, the technology had a good run.

The phenomenon started simply: Former Exxon seismic data explorer Andy Hildebrand manipulated a technology that had previously been used to detect oil under the Earth and applied it to music, debuting his Auto-Tune software in 1997. The program was immediately popular, used to detect pitch, correct vocals and resurrect the careers of Oscar-winning future Christopher Guest parody subjects. Humor ensued. And thus we begin.

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Aziz Ansari performs at Comix on January 9 and 10. Tickets are still available here.

Comedian Aziz Ansari studied marketing at NYU and came up through the city's underground comedy scene before earning his break as co-creator and co-star of MTV sketch show Human Giant. He's now departed for L.A., and is starring alongside Amy Poehler in an upcoming NBC sit-com from The Office executive producer Greg Daniels. Ansari is featured in the upcoming Judd Apatow flick Funny People, the new season of Scrubs, and about a million other projects. He spoke with Sound of the City through his preferred medium of email.--Ben Westhoff

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