Welcome to what may be the most ambitious project we’ve ever undertaken here at OffBeat. As promised last month, in honor of the 300th birthday of New Orleans, we’re going to compile the ultimate (for now, anyway) playlist of the city’s 300 essential songs. In months to come, we plan to cover everything, from the Congo Square creations that were the very birth of American music, to the most recent highlights of funk, bounce, rock ’n’ roll and everything in between. We expect that all t...