Rap for the Masses

I started to hate rap music about 8 years ago. This is weird, because for the 5 years prior to that, it was pretty much all I listened to. I was waiting for the day the Wu-Tang Clan would call me up and ask me to be their 20th member.

Anyway...fast forward to the past few years when rap has just really sucked. It's all commercialized rubbish. I won't even comment on the videos, that are made up of every bad stereotype imagineable.

So, within the past 4 months, I've caught on to a few rappers that are breaking the mold of mediocrity. Note: for the record, I enjoy living in mediocrity, but demand much higher standards on my entertainers.

First: Kanye West - what a great first album! "All Falls Down" is a great song, and including Stacey Dash in the video was a stroke of genius! "Jesus Walks" makes you realize that maybe the Devil doesn't own all the good music.

Second: DJ Dangermouse - you have to give this man some serious credit. Jay-Z drives me nuts on his own, but when Dangermouse lays his vocals over a Jackson Pollockized audio version of the Beatles white album. WOW!!! The Grey Album is fantastic!

Third: The Streets - I never would have thought of a white guy from England as a rapper, but it works. Odd. Definitely odd. It does take some getting used to, but "Fit and You Know It" and "Dry Your Eyes" are great.

So, maybe there is hope for the genre of rap. Maybe they'll learn that creativity counts in spades, and everything shouldn't sound exactly the same as what everyone else is doing.