The best part is when a customer will ask an opinion from you, put their future musical happiness in your hands, invite you to reach way down into your well of life-altering good taste and yank out some deliciously brilliant nugget of wisdom that may change them forever.

Such a thing happened one day when a man approached me with a Sade record and asked if I could think of anything that might be close to her style, anything that would compare to her level of jazzy smooth awesomeness.

I was practically foaming with excitement. I kept my cool, though, and after toweling away the foam, I led him around the store, asking him questions about his tastes, which parts of her style he preferred so that I could select the perfect companions for him.

Within moments I had filled his paws with the best stuff on earth: India.Arie, Lauryn Hill, Jill Scott, Bebel Gilberto, Corinne Bailey Rae, Erykah Badu, and Gigi's new record Gold & Wax, which all you crazy fools must go buy right now. The whole time I was talking about different styles, weaving enviable tapestries of musical review, explaining samba bossanova versus jazz vocal versus classic soul versus hip hop and rhythm and blues, and he was grinning and nodding and eagerly clutching everything I handed to him as if each record was one of the lost gospels, and it was his honor to protect them until death.