Music

Afflictions on pop music chapter one: Rent-a-rappers. I’m looking at you, Pitbull.

If all goes well, this is the first article in a series looking at the various “bad parts” of modern pop music. Deep stuff, as I’m sure you’ll agree. Today I am going to “examine” the incessant plague of rent-a-rappers phoning in a verse of undisputed nonsense that ruins many a good pop tune. It seems like these days you are guaranteed to have a hit if you manage to get one of these guys onto your track. Out of the 28 number ones we’ve had this year, 11 have had a feature of some sort and then there’s the tracks these poor excuses of rap release themselves.

The main offenders of this trend are obviously Flo-Rida and Pitbull. Flo-Rida seemingly has a deal with UK pop acts as he has turned up on songs by Alexandra Burke, The Saturdays and most recently Olly Murs. Whereas Pitbull appears anytime a club is mentioned with that stupid noise he makes, almost as if he’s announcing an imminent apocalypse. Minaj is another close contender appearing here there and everywhere but at least her features have personality and some lyrical creativity – the aforementioned goons seem to only have two muses – girls and clubs. This is what irritates me most – I like GOOD rap music, Jay-Z & Kanye’s album was one of the best of 2011, Azealia is one of my favourite stars of the moment, Eminem is consistently good. But they all write their own raps and try to tell a story while it seems that Flo and Pitbull are just trying to make some easy cash. In fact, the raps are so non-descript that makes me wonder if they actually hear the original song before submitting.it.

What’s most of these songs don’t actually need a rap in the first place – they stand up on their own. Nine times out of ten I’ll only put the non-rap version on my Ipod anyway. So popstars please reconsider next time you’re thinking of ringing up Chipmunk – you could end up with Tinie Tempah rapping about Gaviscon if you’re as unlucky as Ellie Goulding.

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