It's Bigger than Hip-Hop

David Segal published an article in the New York Times this weekend comparing hip-hop to conservative talk radio pundits. I'm not particularly interested in commenting on his points--that rappers and pundits both have huge egos, verbal skillz/skills, and are often getting in feuds with other rappers and pundits, etc. I'm more interested in noting that this is the second prominent article in recent months comparing hip-hop to some larger trend in the cultural world. The first one was Marc Lynch's article in Foreign Policy, comparing beefs between rappers to beefs between nations. Lynch's article got a ton of attention when it came out in July. I wonder, what is the next political or social idea that can be explained with a convenient reference to hip-hop? I vote for health care reform! I'll even start you out: "The public option is just like MP3 downloading." Now, go!

I will say one thing about Segal's article in the Times. If you're going to compare hip hop and conservative punditry, it might make sense to mention the huge fight between Ludacris and Bill O'Reilly. And, if you're going to specifically compare Jay-Z to Rush Limbaugh, you may have wanted to listen to Jay-Z's most recent album, in which he specifically takes on both Bill O'Reilly and Limbaugh himself. This is from the track "Off That."

Please tell Bill O'Reilly to fall back
Tell Rush Limbaugh to get off my balls
This is 2010 not 1864.

I'll leave it at that.