One of these days, I swear I’ll make good on my long-promised CD compilation comprised solely of songs I never get sick of. Problem is, the project keeps smashing head-on into two roadblocks: 1) I’m lazy, and 2) I keep getting sick of the songs I intend to include.

One song that would currently be a lock is Prefuse 73’s “Busy Signal (Make You Go Bombing Mix),” which is in the midst of a two-year run toward the top of my most-played list. If I felt this space existed solely as a forum for perpetuating blatant lies, I’d say that I took the song’s parenthetical title so literally that while listening to it one time I went back and torched my old elementary school. I also might say that I bought my iPod just so that “Busy Signal” could serve as the background music of my life. But I’ve got little to say about this song other than that I absolutely love it.

The beginning, with its beat-boxed, breathy hiccups and Mannie Fresh-style pulsations, sets the song off nicely, but it’s what happens after the voice drops in and says, “so come on and” that makes “Busy Signal” special. For forty seconds, the song is perfect. The beatboxing is still the foundation, but it’s overlapped with some of the finest synthetic horns ever laid to tape. This combination renders “Busy Signal” both a stuttering mess and glass-smooth. I believe that songs as good as “Busy Signal” are precisely why so many were left disappointed by Surrounded by Silence (a record I’ll happily defend)—no other moments in the Prefuse catalog are quite as brilliant. After a slightly creepy xylophone and bassoon interlude, the main sequence is repeated before the song ends fairly abruptly.

Which is precisely what I view as the biggest problem with “Busy Signal”—it’s way too short. I can’t think of a single reason why it has to stop at two minutes and forty-one seconds. The forty-second stretch described above is so good that it could stand to be repeated up to ten times, conservatively. I suppose there’s something to be said about the always-leave-them-wanting-more approach, but, to use an NFL analogy, there’s a fine line between Gale Sayers and Barry Sanders. Unlike Sayers, “Busy Signal” doesn’t suffer from any (metaphorical) crippling knee injuries, but its greatness is far too fleeting all the same.

Regardless, hall-of-famers are hall-of-famers, and “Busy Signal” stands at the upper reaches of my musical pantheon. It’s suitable for moments of stress-free lounging as well as post-shower dance-a-thons. It was even used by MTV to wrap up an episode of Real World vs. Road Rules: The Inferno last summer. If that’s not proof that “Busy Signal” is one of the greatest songs of our time, then I don’t know what is.