Rap and Hip Hop has gained a large following since original rap artists like NWA, Public Enemy, Tupac and Notorious B.I.G. became popular in the late 80’s and 90’s. But all genres of music have those artists that cause people to question how they ever became popular. Rock has Nickelback, pop has Justin Bieber, EDM has LMFAO, metal has Limp Bizkit and the list can go on and on. Just like every other genre, artists have found a way to take the amazing qualities of hip hop or rap and screw it all up. Here is a list of my three worst rap artists of the 21st century:

My first choice for worst artist is Pitbull.  Not only is he a very generic wordsmith, he “borrows” his choruses from older songs that were already popular. He has used incredibly catchy songs like A-Ha’s “Take On Me” to TJR’s “Funky Vodka”. He is a very repetitive rapper who uses the same ad-libs, like “Dale” and “It’s Mr. Worldwide”, multiple times in his most popular songs. The man is just repetitive and cannot come up with his own hooks or choruses.

My next choice is Soulja Boy. He only became a house hold name because he cashed in on a large dance craze. He is just like Silento and DLOW who used a dance to get popular. They are annoying and have the shelf life of warm milk, but that is not why Soulja Boy is bad. He is bad because after he released the already annoying “Crank That”, he did nothing but write songs that had to include the word “swag” seemingly at least ten times in each song. He was the one who caused the craze of 5th graders using a word that only people like JayZ used. He also has not released an album that has seen any mainstream success in a very long time.

My final choice is The Black Eyed Peas, especially will.i.am and Fergie. They are on this list because they first started up with very promising albums like Elephunk and Monkey Business, but when they hit mainstream success, they changed their very unique style to a incredibly generic and overproduced piece of garbage. They went from a renegade hip hop style to a Pop/EDM mix with very uninspired songs like the “ever-so-popular” ear worm called “I’ve Got A Feeling”. The band became a soccer mom’s go-to instead of the almost alternative hip hop group they started as.

So there is my idea of the worst there hip hop artists of the 20th century. Everyone’s opinion be different, but this is simply mine. Watch the Sequoit Media page for the follow up to this story, “Three Best Hip Hop Artists of the 2000’s”