Last year, white MC Sage Francis may have accidentally started a trend when he took exception, online, to a MySpace posting by far superior white MC and former 3rd Bass member MC Serch, then host of VH1's White Rapper Show.
"Pardon the length of this letter, but I took my time to make sure that your new asshole would be top of the line," began Francis's missive on www.sagefrancis.net, sparking a war of words.
Since then, rappers have joined the laptop literati in swarms, and things have gotten weird. UGK's Bun B recently penned this truly mind-blowing entry at HipHopDX.com:
"So I'm in Indianapolis right...Just did a show last night with Big Mike, Devin the Dude, Bushwick Bil [sic], and Scarface...Great crowd...So I check in my hotel and I see a lotta war vets in the buildin'...Most r in wheelchairs, so I guess WWI."
WWI? That can't be right. Continuing...
"These guys on this U.S. battleship brought the components for an atomic bomb that fucked up Japan aboard their ship to like Japan or some shit...Anyway, on the way back, their ship got torpedoed and sank, taking 300+ down with it...There were like 1,100 onboard, so the other 800 sat bobbin' in the ocean for like 4 days...If they didn't die of starvation or dehydration, the sharks ate they ass."
Ouch!
Even producer Just Blaze posted a no-budget YouTube video to promote his blog, themegatrondon.com, where he attempts to buy out hip-hop blogger Jay Smooth by throwing some bills in the air. Then he picks the money back up. As for Blaze's blog itself, recent entries have been mainly concerned with the iPhone.
Blog-rapping's reigning superstar, however, has to be Talib Kweli, a trailblazer when it comes to non-spellchecked Internet commentary. His MySpace blog, www.myspace.com/talibkweli, dates back to 2004, though it seems likely he has been writing it himself since only 2005.
January 16 brought this doozy:
"I have a lot of respect for people like Will[.i.am], Mary [J. Blige] and Prince," he wrote. "They focus on the art and it pays off. They, along with people who grind 9 to 5 every day to make life better for [their] family, are the living embodiment of [Martin Luther] King's dream."
Ridiculous, maybe, but also beyond the realm of criticism. Blogging has become an inalienable human right.
So if Kweli believes King would have loved "My Humps," so be it. Let's just hope he doesn't start equating Fergie with Susan B. Anthony.