I told someone at dinner (just last night) that Plies is the Tupac of the South. As a hip-hop enthusiast, let me tell you, making such a statement requires large d’z (deeez nutz). I’ve been posting about Plies on Hiptics (click for proof), and FINALLY I have a mainstream publication to back up my seemingly outrageous claims. Read the whole thing over at XXL.

“Now the haters will detract I’m sure, but the boy from Ft. Myers, Florida is quite ill. The real problem is that most hip-hop heads made an initial judgment on dude without ever actually listening to his music. (It’s the same thing with Lil Boosie, but props to the homie Brian “B.Dot” Miller for opening up my eyes- BOOSIE gets the stamp!) You want that street shit? Plies got it. Check “Chopper Zone” back from his mixtape days or “Goons Lurkin’” from his first album. You want political rap? Check “Bid Long” or “100 Years” and then try to front like that ain’t no Dead Prez type shit. We already know dude runs radio with joints like “Shawty” and “Bust It Baby Pt.2,” but what’s most impressive is Plies ability to relate to everyday folks. On “1 Day” off the new album, Plies talks about wishing that he could resurrect his deceased homie just so he can take him to the daycare to see his son play one last time. On “Somebody” he flips Patti LaBelle’s “Somebody Loves You,” but instead of turning it into a sappy love song for chicks, Plies dedicates the jam to the incarcerated scarfaces of the world. “Worth Goin Fed Fo,” is another deep track where dude spits, “ I dunno if 25 years worth 2 years of ballin’/That’s a big pill to take and I ain’t tryna swallow it.”

Now when it comes to lyrical miracles, Plies ain’t seeing the likes of Joell Ortiz, Lupe Fiasco and Crooked I. Hell he probably ain’t even seeing Rick Ross. But when it comes to writing songs that connect with people’s everyday lives, very few current rappers can fuck with homie. Pac wasn’t as lyrical as Biggie, but did that make him any less great? Some would argue that Pac’s sincerity and ability to speak to the streets made him better than B.I.G., but that’s a topic for another post.”

My friend Adam sent me a great link to an article in the Economist. If you’re even remotely interested in the connection between hip-hop and politics you should ch-ch-check it out here.

The most popular rappers are brilliant entertainers. They have also done a lot to make people aware of the difficulties facing poor urban blacks. But their political views are neither particularly acute nor central to their work. Consider the hot album of the moment: “Tha Carter III” by Lil Wayne. Its central message is that if you are a rap star, you will get laid. The song “Lollipop”, for example, celebrates a young lady who treats Lil Wayne as she might a lollipop.

On the last track Lil Wayne does get serious. He laments that “one in every nine black Americans are locked up” and that “the money that we spend on sending a motherfucker to jail…would be less to send his or her young ass to college.” Troy Nkrumah, the chairman of the National Hip-Hop Political Convention, thinks it wonderful that Lil Wayne is speaking truth to power. But if Lil Wayne is to be taken seriously, it needs to be pointed out that his “one in nine” figure is inaccurate—it is true only of black men aged 20-34, not black Americans in general. And his analysis is simplistic: the government’s spending priorities are not the sole determinant of whether you break rocks or read books.