Radio hip-hop is of the same quality and appeal of a backed-up toilet at a filthy gas station. There is virtually nothing of substance, intellect or creativity coursing through the radio waves. Turn on KSFM or KBMB and expect to be sorely dissapointed.

Chuck D said, “Hip-hop is the CNN of the streets.” The essence of hip-hop is music that is provocative, insightful and meaningful. KRS One, Eric B and Rakim as well as Ice Cube all blazed trails in the industry by addressing social concerns such as crack cocaine, police brutality and AIDS. Their lyrics shined a light on social issues and ruffled feathers everywhere from the Federal Bureau of Investigations to middle America. People may have hated hip-hop, but they had to respect it.

No more. Hip-hop in general sold out to the highest bidder. The biggest criminal, not literally, who destroyed hip-hop, is Jermaine Dupri. His contributions to the hip-hop community include child rappers Bow Wow and those adorable nitwits Kris Kross. The kids who wore their clothes backwards remained popular until reaching puberty, at which point Dupri lost interest in them.

What makes this middle class white kid qualified to comment on radio hip-hop? I own a car with a tape deck and am too cheap to spring for a CD player, so I am at the mercy of the radio on a daily basis. Before I get too self-important, let me state that the hip-hop I listen to is not written for me at all and I believe the artists that I appreciate couldn’t care less about what positive things I have to say about their work.

But I digress; everyday on the radio is the same. Same songs, same ads and same terrible free merchandise. The banter between songs is trite and irritating. Then there are those magical moments where competing stations play the same exact song thirty seconds apart. It’s never a good song either. It’s always T-Pain in some whiny drivel. We get it, T-Pain, you like the Peter Frampton voice box. Just remember, you are not Roger Troutman, and you never will be.

What’s even more bewildering about these poser stations that claim to support hip-hop is that classic hip-hop is usually played as background music while the DJ’s ramble on and on about promos, concert giveaways and whatever else the station heads desire.

When the radio stations themselves are not massacring a once proud artistic form of expression, its sponsors are squeezing out little nuggets of sacrilege themselves. McDonald’s is just one of the countless corporate criminals that has soiled hip-hop. It has gotten to the point where hip-hop is a joke, a mere shell of itself. Everyday in this country, a homely middle-aged white man can be found rapping in a television or radio ad somewhere that promotes some worthless product of American excess. The day corporate America embraced hip-hop was the day that it began slowly circling the drain.

Let’s take time out of Black History Month to acknowledge and apologize for whites destroying hip-hop. Teenage wannabes want to hear 50 Cent objectify women with his witless rhymes and most girls want to hear bass-farting club beats that have lyrics that could have just as easily been written by any random glue-sniffing kindergartner. Hip-hop stopped being about the content a while ago. Now it is just about creating characters and selling records.

Jordan Guinn can be reached at [email protected]