By "Aaron ""Sage"" Kahle, University High School"

“Everywhere you walk in the vast city of Los Angeles, someone is always repeating the redundant chorus of rap song they’ve heard on Power 106 or saw on MTV. Who are these familiar voices they are echoing? Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, Coolio, Notorious B.I.G., Tupac Shakur to name a few. All of these extremely successful rappers are heard continuously on radio and television stations throughout the U.S. Reality rap has become one of the best selling musical voices of the 90’s among young people. But there is so much more happening on the rap planet.

A lot of rap is too predictable
Reality rap is a smart business aimed to make money off all of you people out there who are victims of the catchy choruses and head-nodding beats. Let’s take one of the most successful and sage rappers out there today, Dr. Dre, who brought up such artists as Warren G and multi-platinum selling Snoop Doggy Dogg. Dr. Dre came from one of the first gangster rap groups in the world of rap, N.W.A. But, after splitting up, Dre went on to do his own thing and became a great success. Now let’s take a look at his platinum-selling single, “Dre Day.” He produced a beat for this track that had everyone’s head nodding, including mine, even though I’m not the biggest fan of reality rap. His lyrics were basic and explicit but he did manage to put some creative street phrases in the song to make it sound good to rap along with. But it seems these days that lyrics don’t mean that much. Henceforth, Dre provided the young audience with a few lines in that song that had you singing along such as

Bow wow wow
yipee yo, yipee yay,
Death Row in the
motha ——— house!

That line had just about everyone in the young world spitting it out wherever they roamed. Dre knows how to develop catchy lines and harmonious beats and he did so on the release of “Ain’t Nothin’ but a G Thang” which had a dope beat. That single sold a lot of copies too. That’s what reality rap is trying to do: make an extremely high amount of money.
Another master of this theory is Coolio, who sold a total of 2.5 million copies of his single “Gangster’s Paradise,” which had a phat beat and came out with a cool chorus by LV. Did the song have a lot of lyrical potential? Not really, but it did send messages out there. There’s no thought in my mind that would allow me to say that reality rappers are stupid or illiterate because they’re beyond that. But I can state the facts, people out there listen to the radio and MTV and think reality rap is the best stuff they’ve ever heard, but you guys aren’t hearing a fourth of it. The problem is, when you guys hear a song that’s not played on the radio all of the time, you automatically say it’s wack. Even if you’ve never heard the song, you think it’s wack just from the name of the rapper. Open your minds because right now you’re swimming around in an aquarium when you could be swimming in the ocean.
Del the Funkee Homosapien, Saafir, Ras Kass, Vooodu. I’m sure you have never even heard of these unrecognized artists. So they’re bunk, right? Wrong. The rappers with the most talent are usually the ones nobody has heard of. For example, Ras Kass is the 20-year-old underground rap artist from the Los Angeles crew, Western Hemisfear. He has verbal ammunition that World War Two can’t even hang with. Rhymes such as,

My for rhymin’ magnum
got 357 calibers/
to bust suckers’ melons
like Gallagher,

from “Come Widdit.” No reality rappers are bustin’ rhymes like that. Don’t try to front and say those lyrics are weak because I’ve heard rappers bust some rhymes similar to that and everyone starts to jock, so start recognizing the other artists out there in the hip-hop ocean.
Ras Kass’s associate in the Western Hemisfear crew Vooodu, kicks lyricals to stimulate ya mind like a trigonometry test. With rhymes such as,

Givin’ MCs cesaerian sections
with this venomous selection

which is from an underground compilation album he did. Those kind of phat rhymes can put you on Jenny Craig. The first Hieroglyphics crew member to come out, Del, the Funkee Homosapien, can ya mind on a brand new planet with his lyrics. On his song, “Catch a Bad One,” he flows,

Others ride my jock
like a bicycle
when I’m psycho
fools try to play me like Tyco.

and then comes back later with,

Sign a peace treaty
or you’ll be needin’
medical attention
when I leave you bleedin.’

Give up the props. It’s phat and there’s no way you can say it isn’t unless you got a enclosed mind.
Taking a look at the East Coast, let’s explore the verbalist MC, Jeru tha Damaja. His album, “The Sun Rises in the East,” was full of vocabulary and he kicked a crazy vocabalistic flow (which was named the best lyrical song of 1994 by Source Magazine) called “Mental Stamina” with unique rhymes such as,

You’ll get your a– kicked
challenge my verbal gymnastics
Vanacrobatics
vocabulary callisthenics
can’t understand mathematics.

Pretty dope I would say.
Another verbal genius of the hip hop world is Keith Murray, whose style specializes in vocabulary using such words in his flows as “mythologically,” psychomatic,” and “astronomical,” which gives him a unique style. Hip hop produces these kinds of rappers and I know you people out there would like it. If you like Wu-Tang, you will like the ocean of hip hop. Believe me.
Now where can you get this stuff? It’s not as hard as you think, even though a lot of hip hop artists do underground stuff that are strictly for promotional use and aren’t released in stores. But, the stores out there hold a lot of hip hop rap that you can take a taste of. If you want a dose of Saafir and Ras Kass doing a song together, check out the “Street Fighter” soundtrack for “Come Widdit.” Vooodu can’t be heard because he’s only done underground albums, but Del the Funkee Homosapien can be heard on his two albums, starting off with his first release, “I Wish My Brother George Were Here,” which kicks a brand new type of flavor for your mind.
Other members of his East Oakland Hieroglyphics crew can be bought too. These artists consist of the group Souls of Mischief which have two albums, “93 Til’ Infinity,” and “No Man’s Land.” Also, Casual has an album out titled “Fear Itself,” and another group from the crew, Extra Prolific, released an album called “Like it Should Be.” All should have you smiling.
Jeru tha Damaja’s “The Sun Rises in the East,” is a great album from the East Coast along with Keith Murray’s “The Most Beautifullest Thing in This World,” which both have a cool and bizarre style of rapping. Other rappers to peep within the hip hop frontier would be Organized Confusion with their extremely strange style on their album, “The Extinction Agenda,” which is their second album. The first is hard to get in stores unless you special order it. All of A Tribe Called Quest’s albums are dope, especially their first release, “People’s Distinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm,” which is one of the greatest hip hop albums of all time. I could name so many rappers in the hip hop planet, but I don’t have enough space so just check up on some of those artists and absorb the hip hop drug.
Magazines that know the most about hip hop consist of two magazines and none of them are the Source. One is Rap Pages which is published in Los Angeles and is little more underground than the Source. However, the magazine that I believe expresses the largest amount of hip hop knowledge would be 4080, which you can pick up at newsstands every month or month and a half.
Television doesn’t really provide us with too many hip hop shows. Yo! MTV Raps with Dr. Dre and Ed Lover is old school so they know what’s up but probably the best rap show out there today is BET’s Rap City with host, Joe Claire. You’ll find a whole array of hip hop on that show from the old school to the new and you can always learn a lot about the artist featured on each show.

Some older people like hip hop
There’s another great thing about hip hop. When our parents and other older people listen to reality rap, all they hear is the negativity and they feel that rap is nothing but killing and having sex. But I can tell you some true facts, I’ve witnessed older people who hate rap listen to some hip hop and become astonished. They never realized how great hip hop can be. I know it’s sad that they don’t see the great contributions Dr. Dre and Ice Cube have made, but that’s life. But a lot of them do respect good hip hop when they hear it.
Like I said before, there is absolutely nothing wrong with liking reality rap, but you have to unhinge your mind to the other side of rap. Reality rap evolves around only a few topics which makes a lot of it sound the same. People only listening to reality rap are swimming in an aquarium. Hip hop is an extended ocean that has no barrier lines. You can keep swimming and swimming because you will never run out of rhymes and that means everything’s unpredicted. Dr. Dre, Biggie Smalls and Ice Cube are very intelligent individuals who know exactly what they’re doing. Yet, Ras Kass, Del, the Funkee Homosapien and Vooodu are just as intelligent. So jump out of the aquarium and come take a swim in the ocean.