Hip-hop replaced Rock music (or what passes for it these days) as the most popular music on radio and album sales about a year ago. Normally, I would be pretty upset at this for a lot of reasons, but

the actual replacement of hip-hop and rap as the top product wasn't the real issue here. The problem was that the hip-hop and rap that most people buy is garbage. The stuff played on the radio is junk that uses the same repetitive beats constantly and has lyrics that a drunk mute could think up. The only songs that are played on any hip-hop stations are the current hits and nothing else. They will never play any song that isn't the current hit of that moment, despite the fact that some of the best hip-hop and rap is from almost three decades ago.

So, in order to stop this particular ranting and focus on talking about some good hip-hop groups, I present some amazing hip-hop/rap groups that are better than anything played on the hit stations. Some groups might be left out for either space or because I forgot them.

1. Blackalicious:

Oh man, these guys are amazing. I think of them to being the Led Zeppelin of hip-hop on their second album alone. Blazing Arrow is the pinnacle of lyrical talent mixed with fantastic beats. They have a real old-school sound using Hammond Organs and guitars mixed in with good scratching and production skill through the roof. Ever since my brother brought it home from college when I was in eighth grade, I have probably listened to it at least once a week or more. It

never gets old. Ever. And yet, you will probably never hear Blackalicious on any radio station on this coast, because they do not fill the stereotype of money-driven violent idiots. They're more of a

progressive duo, speaking of society’s ills through their flawless vocal delivery. The beats are perfect. One song can be just one constant rhythm with many little things stacked on until it reaches a climax and goes into the next song, which blasts out your speakers like an Atomic bomb of intelligent hip-hop. Or they can combine what could have been a few separate songs into one long song that will blow your mind into a million pieces. The opening track and the ending track are the same jam, and in-between is a musical story that will floor you from the start and wrap everything up nicely at the end. Blazing Arrow is a Hall of Fame album that should be in everyone's music collection regardless of whether you like hip-hop or not. I'd recommend listening to "Blazing Arrow" and "Paragraph President" to start off with, and then buy or download the album so you can be awakened to what real hip-hop sounds like instead of the garbage on MTV and radio.

2. Jurassic 5:

Jurassic 5, also called J5, are along the same route as Blackalicious, but with lyrics that hit home a little harder and beats that have more volume. Although they actually have six members, J5 pound home a message of both partying and social problems. They also experiment with the old-school sound, going so far as to sample a jazz recording from the 30's and turn it into a bridge for "Jurass

Finish First," a catchy song with impeccable flow. One of J5's greatest assets is the way that one line can just flow right into another at the fantastic speed that it does. Although they are hardly

the fastest rappers, they are far more accurate and tolerable than others. The rhymes themselves are like a metaphorical punch to the face and based on a heavy beat and then the lyrics are just spit out

at an amazing pace. Some songs to get of theirs are "Quality Control" and "Jurass Finish First", which are good for both blasting out of your car speakers to annoy people and just listening to at home alone.

3. N.W.A. :

One of the founding groups from the 1980s and the group whose members launched the careers of many other superstars, N.W.A. was the voice of West Coast black rage. Consisting of Dr. Dre, Ice Cube, Eazy-E, MC Ren, DJ Yella and, eventually, Snoop Dogg, N.W.A. was similar to Public Enemy in their ability to drive home a message with loud beats, but unlike Public Enemy, they had no political message to spread. They simply exemplified the gangsta' lifestyle that thrived in the

dirt-poor Compton neighborhoods of Los Angeles where they grew up. The group inspired so much terror with their incredibly violent lyrics and rampant cursing that the FBI kept tabs on them after the release of Straight Outta' Compton and helped encourage putting up the warning sticker on CDs (which guitar god Frank Zappa fought tooth-and-nail alongside groups like N.W.A.). They were the first and most in-your-face ghangsta' rap group of them all.

4. Public Enemy:

One of the greatest and powerful rap groups ever to exist, Public Enemy was an awe-inspiring musical and political force. Public Enemy was made up of angry young men who wouldn't and couldn't accept the surrounding situation of the ghettos they lived in. Their first album ,released in 1987 was fairly good, but their second album, "It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back," released in 1988, was the equivalent of a trillion bombs dropping on your head at the same time.

The songs were full of frustration at politics as well as everything else that Chuck D and Flava Flav didn't like. With glass-shattering beats laid down by the Bomb Squad, Public Enemy took on anyone or anything they could. Their music was so loud and furious it actually struck fear into the hearts of white Americans. Even with Flav's hilarious rhyming in contrast to Chuck D's riot-inducing oration, especially from their song "Don't Believe the Hype," In the daytime the radio's scared of me/ 'Cause I'm mad, plus I'm the enemy/ They can't c'mon and play with me in rimetime/ 'Cause I know the time, plus I'm gettin' mine." Enough said. Scaring conservative white people and making block-shaking music at the same time gets you a good place in my book, which is just a nice thing to have under your belt.

 

5. Outkast:

Good stuff. There's really not much more to the Atlanta duo. Every song of theirs that gets on the radio is amazing, but gets criticized once it gets overplayed, even though they're already edited by the prudes at whatever station plays it. Most of their best songs are the ones that never make the radio due to content or the fact that most DJs can't tell a great song from a dead animal. Whether you’re listening to one of their dance-songs or the softer instrumentals, there is nothing on any one of their albums that they made simply to entertain you for awhile until that song got overplayed. While it is true that "Hey Ya" from Andre 3000's The Love Below became stale from too much

radio time, the lyrics are actually pretty sad if you take the time to actually listen to them. Although it is rumored that Big Boi and Andre 3000 will go their separate ways after they release their next album, they would still leave behind a large collection of great music and have the satisfaction of being both commercially successful and critically acclaimed, which is a lot more difficult than it sounds.

That about does it. I know I left out a lot of great artists and groups, but this commentary (rant) was getting pretty long and I could have kept this up until the end of time. Listen to these bands and

pick up some of their albums the next time you're in CD Cellar or stealing it off the Internet and listen to them all the way through.