Writer Ned Sublette’s appreciation of Bo Diddley was published in the new issue of Smithsonian, and it’s a personal, free-wheeling take on the breadth of Diddley’s accomplishments. Some you know, some you don’t, but all are infused with Sublette’s passion for his subject:

It was positively modernist: a song called “Bo Diddley” about the exploits of a character named Bo Diddley, by an artist named Bo Diddley, who played the Bo Diddley beat. No other first-generation rock ‘n’ roller started out by taking on a mystical persona and then singing about his adventures in the third person. By name-checking himself throughout the lyrics of his debut record, Bo Diddley established what we would now call his brand. Today this approach to marketing is routine for rappers, but Bo Diddley was there 30 years before. He was practically rapping anyway, with stream-of-consciousness rhyming over a rhythm loop.