"Give it a Name" by Knom Dee Garre

Rap or hip-hop? Which do you prefer as the label for what is the dominant genre of popular music. It seems that hip-hop is a more blanket term for music which uses electronically created beats and is performed by black people. For example, the Fugees songs used rap and they are still one of the stalwarts of hip hop's golden age. I prefer rap as a label for any song which contains, well, rap. (But if we are getting strict here, then Lou Reed is a rap artist). Unfortunately, outside of Eminem and Jay-Z, most of the top rappers do not cultivate a career which has an arc other than the all-out grab for the biggest seller they can get. Such hyper-talents as Nelly, Ludacris and the convicted felon Mystikal all emerged in the early 2000s as the best practitioners of the genre, whatever you call it. But none of them seemed to consider himself a musical artist. Ludacris got bogged down in his battle with Bill O'Reilly and his failed effort to separate Pepsi from its millions. Then he put out "Chicken and Beer", which was the latest in artistic failures by seemingly can't miss talents. Nelly, in the most unoriginal way, focused his energies on his Apple Bottom clothing line and credibility-crushing one offs with the flavors of the moment and "Nellyville" suffered, although it was always going to be difficult to follow up the landmark "Country Grammar". And Mystikal, well his is the saddest story of all. After arriving on the scene with a loud crack with "Shake Ya Ass" and laying the blueprint for followers like the annoyingly ubiquitous Li'l Jon, Mystikal put out some of the tightest story-raps since 2Pac. But, Michael Tyler, as he was known when he served in the Gulf War in 1991, was convicted early this year of a sexual assault felony and sentenced to a long jail sentence. Too bad, because "Tarantula" was a worthy follow-up to his debut smash.
With Jay-Z "retiring" until he gets bored (this is a longer send-off than Kareem Abdul-Jabbar's) and Eminem apparently retreating into 1970s Elvis-like success/excess and the diversion of D-12, we need someone in this genre to step up and declare him or herself an artist to create a career worth following instead of a series of pop-hits of the moment.