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

With the VH1 Hip-Hop Honors celebrating Def Jam’s 25th anniversary, KRS-One offered a more balanced opinion on the label’s legacy, naming it single-handedly responsible for hip-hop’s destruction. Which we don’t think was an actual award. In tangentially related news, it emerged that Def Jam alumnus Foxy Brown may be the star of a sex tape. Arch enemy Maino dubbed Inga a “washed up bitch”, inadvertently ensuring maximum interest from the Readers’ Wives crowd.

Former Def Jam gaffer Jay-Z appeared on Oprah, his revelation that hip-hop had united different races giving the talk-show queenpin one of her patented “a-ha moments”. We think that’s actually called a “duh moment”, O. Still, with her new found tolerance of rappers, Oprah may want to visit Atlanta’s Woodruff Library to pore over the poetry, scribblings and til receipts of Tupac Shakur – although she’ll be fuming when she finds out that the entire Maya Angelou oeuvre has made way for leather-bound compendiums of Pac’s Biggie-with-a-knob-on-his-head sketches.

T3 gave us a hint of what to expect from Slum Village’s soon-come new LP, while bandmate Elzhi kept his skills sharp performing a capella in LA. In other Detroit-themed news, rumours were rife that Eminem might be on the verge of signing Slaughterhouse, although in the meantime he had to contend with the taunts of exiled former G-Uniter Young Buck.

Alchemist proclaimed himself the ping-pong don, but he may soon have competition from Lil’ Boosie, who’ll have plenty of chance to practice when he enters sing-sing for crimes involving guns and drugs.

Finally, a revelation that nobody saw coming – Snoop Dogg admitted that he gets his laugh on watching ‘Project’ Pat Routledge on ’90s Brit-com Keeping Up Appearances. No word yet on whether Birds Of A Feather or The Vicar Of Dibley have cropped up on Calvin’s Amazon recommendations list.