Word: rapped
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...first time Kanye West asked the folks at Roc-A-Fella records to let him rap, there was an uncomfortable silence. As a producer, West had churned out hits for Roc-A-Fella's intimidating trio of stars--Jay-Z, Cam'ron and Beanie Siegel--and earned praise for his great ear and tireless ethic. But in 2002 the idea that someone like West could be a successful rapper was faintly absurd. "Kanye wore a pink shirt with the collar sticking up and Gucci loafers," recalls Damon Dash, then Roc-A-Fella CEO. "It was obvious we were not from...
...against Polo shirts), he shattered the myth that he was too soft, too weird and too bourgeois to fit the mold of a platinum-selling rapper. His 2004 debut album, The College Dropout, went nearly triple platinum, topped all the major critics' polls, earned 10 Grammy nominations and made rap accessible to audiences that hadn't paid attention in years. "That record restored my faith in hip-hop," says Jamie Foxx, who lent comic vocals to West's No. 1 hit Slow Jamz...
West is hardly the first person to bring a Buppie sensibility to rap. In the '80s, DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince, A Tribe Called Quest and LL Cool J successfully wove suburban perspectives into rebellious music, but when gangsta rap arrived, nuance was smothered by a blanket of extreme poses. Tupac Shakur, once a student at the Baltimore School for the Arts, died with THUG LIFE tattooed across his torso. On The College Dropout, West found a way to bridge the divide without self-destruction. His follow-up, Late Registration, arrives Aug. 30 and continues to mix race...
Then one day I turned 25, turned on BET and realized that the music that marked my identity suddenly had nothing to say to me. I polled my friends and came to the conclusion that I was part of a lost generation--rabid African-American rap fans who had sadly concluded that the soundtrack of their lives was scratched. Most of them self-medicated with Alicia Keys or soft jazz. Others simply turned off the radio completely, preferring to replay the hits of their youth, hoping to recapture the moment they first mastered the snake or the cabbage patch...
GIVE THEM A REASON TO BITE The 2006 X-Rap lures are the latest from Rapala, a Vaaksy, Finland--based firm. The translucent bodies' holographic foil will dazzle your prey, and the scalelike detail is beneath a transparent skin, so it won't wear away. The $14 model, top, works best for bigger game, such as grouper...