Will I Get Sick If I Eat a Cholo?

I shouldn't have to reiterate this, but I keep my ear to the streets. Since I've moved from Austin, this has become slightly more difficult, as there are not real hip-hop stations here in Lincoln. Anyway, before I left Austin, the song "Lean Like a Cholo" was getting blasted, but here in Lincoln it is just now starting to get play. Of course, people in both Austin and Lincoln are asking "What is a Cholo?" Fortunately, I have a friend that is fluent in Spanish Urban Dictionary to ask. A cholo is a Mexican gangster for a more specific definition click the link or watch this music video filled with bad acting.



This song catching on made me start thinking about hip-hop in general. I have been listening to hip-hop since the old-school (way before the original version of that song). I don't really know when, but somewhere along the way hip-hop became mainstream. I mean really mainstream, more than just Vanilla Ice. The first time I remember a lot of my friends buying a rap album I had it was Dr. Dre's (The Chronic) 2001. Up until that point, most of them liked a song here or there, but it was never big-time. Once white suburban America got into hip-hop, it exploded (financially...of course you can argue that this was also the death of true hip-hop).

Hip-hop turning mainstream is not what I want to talk about - I'll leave that to people smarter than me - but if you can remember back to before hip-hop became mainstream, one of the biggest arguments hip-hop haters had was that it doesn't take talent to be a good rapper. You don't hear that argument anymore do you? Know why? Its because since hip-hop became mainstream, we've seen all kinds of people try to rap. And most of those people sucked. A lot. Today, we'll take a look at some of the failures (technically, I've already showed you one - its just that I kinda like the song despite the bad flow).

The first one hits close to home. Tommie Frazier was a member of one of the greatest college football team of all time, the '95 Nebraska Cornhuskers. Frazier was the best player on that team and could have been great in the NFL if not for blood clots. Unfortunately, he also attempted to drop a freestyle with his boy Terrell Farley in a hotel room.



You know its getting real raw when you're spitting into a tabasco sauce bottle. Fortunately for Tommie (and me since I'm writing this post), he's not the only one with a ridiculous rap video.



You may not know, but Hip-Hop Harry is a popular kids show. I can't even make it through that entire video. Holy nuts. Can't we just kids to watch their Baby Einstein videos like Baby Jesus. Besides, I don't think a bear with talk with a voice like that anyway - it definitely should be lower (I want some of that stuff...someone make that happen for me).

I would assume that Tommie and Hip-Hop Harry know they are ridiculous. The best things, as is the case in all of life, are when people don't think they are atrocious. Such is the case of RehDogg (not to be confused with Snoop Dogg).



Why must you make me cry, RehDogg. That video is so low rent, it won't even make it on BET late-night programming. I guess you could argue that RehDogg isn't mainstream considering most of you haven't heard of him, but he is on the YouTube.com and has a website. That's close enough for me.

Of course, these are not the only perpitrators, I could go on all day, but in the interest of actually publishing this post, I'll stop here.