“I’m not rapper. I’m a musician.” If we had a rand for every time we heard this come out of a rapper’s mouth we’d be able to afford enough silicon and collagen to create an entirely new Nicki Minaj. To be fair, we can’t knock rhymers for wanting to explore other musical landscapes but we also see through the ones who use “creative licence” as a backdoor to sneak their agendas into our ears. With the help of the Hype-O-Meter, we determine which rappers had the most drastic (and peculiar) of musical switches.
Flo Rida
Looking at the guy, he fits the profile of your archetypal notorious gangster rapper. And his introduction to the game was through the backing of some of the hardest at the time including Rick Ross, DJ Khaled and Birdman. So when this ridiculously muscular, tattooed black man traded the streets to sing electro hits on boats with Miley Cyrus and Tiao Cruz while covered in glow-in-the-dark paint and sipping Cosmopolitans, everyone was left understandably a little startled. We ain’t mad at you though, Flo; get your paper.
Kid Cudi
So XXL announce their annual RAPPERS Freshman class of 2009. And among them are some flame throwers like Blu, Wale, Corey Gunz and Mickey Factz. Oh and wait, Kid Cudi. Granted, Scott has earned his rightful place in music through his unique style of errr reciting syllables over instrumentals (which we love). But does anyone else feel like they’re still waiting for him to RAP?
Disclaimer: We mess with Cudi; he’s cool as fxck.
R. Kelly
Okay, technically, R. Kelly is not a rapper (he once was though; remember TP2.Com?). But musically speaking, no one has had more lives than this dude. He seamlessly transitions from deeply effusive classic R&B to a gospel, and then paradoxically creates the avid sinner’s club anthem and no-one seems to think anything strange of this, more than 20 years in. We see you, Robert. We see you.
Snoop Lion
Considering that Snoop is a man who’s smoked more marijuana than the sea has water particles, we can be forgiven for being sceptical about his “spiritual” and rather convenient move to Rastafarianism. Of course, this move arrived in an ensemble for which the matching piece was reggae music. The most notorious gangster rapper still alive, also the man accused of the murder of Phillip Woldermarian, is singing messages of peace. Yes, there is suddenly totally nothing suspect about this.
Nicki Minaj
It’s just a little difficult to come to terms with the fact that the same human who got the streets all messed up with her verse on Drizzy’s ‘Up All Night’ also created the background music to every twelve year old white girl’s birthday party memories with ‘Super Bass’ and ‘Star Ships’. See where we’re going with this?
Lil Wayne
Now we’re used to Weezy’s asinine antics but when he initially announced he was dropping an entire rock album, one couldn’t help but blame the sizzurp for obscuring his reality. We applaud Mr Carter’s boldness but Rebirth was weird then and it’s still weird now.
Article by: Ghetto Othello