HHC Digital’s weekly online rap round-up…
By Richard Watson

In 1994, HHC placed a bet that, by 2010, Memphis horrorcore upstarts Three 6 Mafia would have both an Oscar and their own cookery show. Sorry, Ladbrokes. Meanwhile, in TV news we didn’t prophesise in the nine-fo’, Ice Cube parlayed his Are We There Yet? family film franchise into a sitcom.

Inspectah Deck and Joe Budden stayed spatting while former foes Cam’ron and Mase joined forces, a partial result for Children Of The Corn fans but the Betha-boycotting DJ Star won’t be supporting. Meeting with greater fanfare was the first joint from Rakim’s new set. In these fast-moving times, it’s reassuring to hear the God back rapping about the pyramids, and Nostalgia was also in effect as NORE served up some 90s-style gay rapper rumouring.

You know we’re in a recession when rappers start talking down their earnings. The baby mama drama continued for Nas, who apparently still can’t convince Kelis to make do with the slightly soiled baby seat he got back off Carmen. In other other-half news, The Game, who also launched a Twitter-based search for bandmates, apologised for calling Jigga’s missus a hoe by admitting, “I don’t know where she’s been or who she’s been with”. It takes a big man to say he’s sorry with a subliminal dis.

Disproving the notion that these days rappers can’t write anything longer than 140 characters, hip-hop got book smart. While Q-Tip is telling all and Prodigy is planning a presumably CAPS-heavy tome, Jay-Z – who once patronised listeners by checking, on wax, whether they’d understood the simple ‘bear arms’ pun he’d just dropped – is publishing a whole book decoding his lyrics for us mere mortals. A spokesperson for Random House said, “With Christopher Wallace, the original author of Jay-Z’s lyrics, sadly passed, Jay-Z himself was the logical next choice for this project.”

Finally, UK spitter Mystro dropped the world’s funniest Drake remix, while Unkut debated the merits of hip-hop’s premier jokester.

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