Christopher Bridges isn’t the only one shocked to learn that his rapping alter ego, Ludacris, finally cracked the Top 10 of MTV’s best rappers list after a decade in the game.
How could it possibly take this long?
The rapper with the fuel-injected delivery is also learning that, tragically, there is a downside to behaving sanely, staying out of jail, avoiding scandal, not having 10 baby’s mommas and being very community oriented: you stay off the white media radar that feasts on blood, psychotic behavior and black criminality.
First of all, MTV is hardly qualified to develop the criteria to determine who the best rappers are in the game today, yesterday or any other time. Secondly, MTV has always been late to the game in terms of recognizing and showing love to urban trends and black artists. Ludacris, who exploded into the game with the ferocious machine-gun tongue and has long been one of rap’s most consistently successful acts — has had five platinum records and seven albums in 10 years — and should have been on the list from the jump.
That it took a decade for Luda to land on MTV’s top 10 list demonstrates my point to the fullest. Ludacris thinks so as well and vented his frustration via Twitter.
“I finally made MTV’s top 10 MC’s list.” tweeted Ludacris. “Y’all finally startin to wake up I see. Now it’s time to beat em over the f–kin head!”
Even MTV acknowledges how deficient their urban detection system is. “Despite his increasing Hollywood cache, vicious guest appearances on multiple remixes—and the ‘original version’ like Justin Bieber’s “Baby” — and his albums repeatedly reaching No. 1 on Billboard’s hip-hop albums chart, 2010 is the first time Luda, born Chris Bridges, is included in the list,” MTV says on its Web site.
That statement makes my next point. Luda, whose recognizable rhythmic flow has been heard on a gang of records in 2010, had to make appearances on pop records to finally get the props that MTV shamefully and ignorantly redirected to lesser talents in years past. Allhiphop.com concurs with my sentiments.
“I think Luda should have been on the Hottest Mcs list,” said Allhiphop’s Chuck Creekmur. “To be honest, lyrically he exceeds most of his peers. I think his penchant for avoiding foolishness, gossip and other attention seeking ploys keeps him slightly outside of the headlines. But he fits all of the criteria and has been top tier from day one.”
Black should be used to this by now. If you are a black artist with no buffoonery attached, you get no love. A generation ago, they didn’t play any black artists (and we don’t have to rehash what happened in 1983 that changed that forever). And I was actually indignant to learn that MTV never played videos by New Edition in the ’80s and ’90s, though they immediately (and always) played the videos by New Edition’s white rip-offs, New Kids on the Block, who were ironically discovered by the same man.
What a joke. And that’s the adjective I would use to characterize MTV’s annual top rappers list.
–terry shropshire
