It doesn't matter what you listened to as a kid, chances are if you are white most rappers scared the hell out of you. Why wouldn't they? A lot of them did time for everything from drug charges to armed robbery. Now rap has become so much a part of the mainstream music scene that most current rappers don't frighten anyone. Some of them even appear on Sesame Street! With that in mind we present a list of nine men who have gone a little too mainstream and thus lost their edge.
9. Sean "Puffy" Combs/Puff Daddy/Puffy /P. Diddy/Diddy/Diddy-Dirty Money
Alright, he is not the best example to lead off this list. After all, Sean Combs is more of a mogul and a business man than he is a rapper, but he used to roll with Notorious BIG, and there was a time when that was all you needed to do to scare white people. White people slowly started to accept to this guy that can't pick a name and stick with it when he tried to launch his own rap career. Soon after came a clothing line, vodka and champagne brands, and multiple MTV reality shows. The fact that he was parodied by Weird Al Yankovich also made him seem a little less frightening. When the name changes started coming more often than hit records we all realized that this is a guy with an identity crisis that deserved our pity more than our fear.
8. Master P
In the late 90s Master P and his No Limit Soldiers ran New Orleans. There were rumors about people that P personally put hits out on. Was any of it true? Maybe not, but the stories and those all black tricked out Escalades rolling down Canal Street were enough to make people nervous. P and his two brothers Silkk the Shocker and C-Murder (who not ironically was arrested for murder) formed a group called TRU, which would sell out arenas, but you had to be 18 to get a ticket. P started losing his edge right after he hit big with "Make 'em Say Uggh" and he tried to make it in a semi-professional basketball league. P said he had skills. What was he best at? Making the opposing team look awesome. Then P started pushing his son - not as a rapper, but as a Nickelodeon star. Long after Master P was noteworthy (let alone frightening to white people) he joined the cast of Dancing with the Stars.
7. 50 Cent
When he first broke on the scene we heard two things about 50. First, his name was pronounced "fiddy" not "fifty." Poor syntax usually means a bad temper. White people are scared to death of black guys with bad tempers. Also, he had been shot eight times and lived to tell about it. What!? That happens to guys like John McClain and the T-1000, not real life people! Then the rumors about his sexuality became a little more well known. And then to top it all off, he played a guy that "wasn't all bad" in Righteous Kill, a movie that had both Robert De Niro and Al Pacino and still managed to suck.
6. Wu Tang Clan
In the mid 90s, there was no rap group scarier than Wu Tang. They hated whitey. They were smart guys. They all knew kung fu. And there were just so damn many of them! So what happened? Wu Tang's fall from "fearsome" to "fun" can be attributed to three members. First there was Ol' Dirty Bastard. Yes, he had a name that was meant to strike fear into the hearts of suburban parents, but when it came out that he was homeless, you had to wonder if he would kill you or just ask you for change. Then there are Method Man and Redman. These two guys and their short lived Fox sitcom "Method and Red" single handedly softened Wu Tang. You can't use a laugh track and still be hard core.
5. Jay Z
Much like Diddy, Jay Z is more of a suit than a rapper these days. We know he has enough money to seriously contemplate buying an NBA franchise. That is a lot of money! When a man with that much money goes on sold out rap tours he doesn't seem scary. He seems eccentric. Howard Hughes was eccentric. There is nothing scary about eccentric until you get to the point that you are saving your urine and toe nail clippings in jars.
4. Ice-T
This man wrote a song called "Cop Killer." How in the hell is it possible for him to lose his edge? It's very simple. Give up on your dreams of ridding the world of police men to chase kid touchers with Richard Belzer. It also doesn't hurt to turn on the TV each week and see a beautiful woman like Mariska Hargitay standing next to Ice-T without a look of "I may get murdered" in her eyes. By the way, did I mention that he was recently in a Twitter feud with Aimee Mann? That's not good for street cred.
3. Snoop Dogg
Okay, let's not fool ourselves. Snoop was never the scariest guy to come out of West Coast hip hop, but he had a reputation for loving drugs and he put out one of the darkest songs and videos of all time with "Murder Was the Case." Plus, there is that video where he and his boys all turn into dogs. And do they turn into labs and collies? Nope! Pit bulls and Rotweillers. Scary stuff for white people. Now he runs a youth football league and he has his own show on E! He is kind of the Ozzy Osbourne of the rap world. Am I worried he may shoot me? No, because he is too busy getting nagged to death by his wife.
2. Ice Cube
When your best known lyric is "Straight outta Compton. Crazy ass n***** named Ice Cube" it is easy to see why white folks were a tad uncomfortable with Ice Cube. Plus, in the early 90s, the man measured how good or bad a day he had by whether or not he had to shoot someone with an assault rifle. It is understandable that most jive ass honkeys wanted to stay on Cube's good side. Where did it all go wrong for Cube? Well, like all rappers he tried his hand at acting, which didn't go well but at least he was getting bad ass roles...that is until Are We There Yet Came Along. Then there was Are We Done Yet and whatever that movie about the female quarterback on the Pop Warner team was. Now Ice Cube seems like a guy you could leave your kids with for a weekend.
There was a time when the scariest rapper of all was not an imposing, muscular black man, but a white guy who couldn't have weighed more than 160 pounds. Em's lyrics were about murdering and kidnapping people and his interviews made you think he had a short enough fuse to turn some of those rhymes into reality. So what happened? Well it started in 2002 when he performed with Elton John at the Grammys. When the scariest guy in the room starts placating people he's offended he suddenly becomes less scary. Then fast forward to the summer of 2009. Who pops up in a cameo in an Adam Sandler movie? That's right, Slim Shady...wearing glasses no less! Appearing in Funny People only scares one white guy - your agent. He knows your career is virtually over.
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