'THIS IS NOT A GAME, PEOPLE!'

I've got a lot of guilty pleasures, but one of the biggest as of late has to be VH1's 'The White Rapper Show'. Kind of an American Idol / Survivor / Real World hybrid, the just of the show is finding the next 'Great White Hope' of hip-hop. The show throws 12 wannabe MC's from various locales and backgrounds in a hovel in the birthplace of hip-hop, the Boogie Down Bronx, and pits them against each other in various challenges testing both their mic skills and knowledge of the game.

The show is hosted/moderated/judged by a white hip-hop legend in his own right, MC Serch from 3rd Bass, and super-producer Prince Paul (the man behind De La's opus '3 Feet High & Rising' ) and luminaries from Grandmaster Flash to Kurtis Blow to Brand Nubian to Just Blaze are brought in to drop knowledge on these kids as they strive to become last MC standing. Seriously, not only are these lucky contestants getting an opportunity to blow up...but they are getting schooled by true legends.

The actual contestants are way too new school for my taste. Some of them have decent skills on the mic, but they are all kind of cookie-cutter to what's selling records in the genre today. That said, watching some of these youngsters and how tweaked they are is what gives the show it's charm. One cat, the self-professed 'King of the Burbs' John Brown, is seriously from another planet. The dude drives people nuts by repeatedly referring to a "Ghetto Revival", a personal social movement scant on details other than the claim that it's a "lifestyle brand" that will support "the revival of ghettos and all types of different struggles throughout the world". BWA-HA! Even better than the interaction between the housemates, is the freestyle contest at the end of each episode to decide who stays and who'll step off.

Really, i'm not doing it near the justice it deserves, so tune in or hit up Vh1.com and check it. Outside of that, i'm digging on NBC's 'Heroes', plus the Thursday night 1-2 punch of 'My Name is Earl' and the US version of 'The Office' (F the Haters, it's just as good as the original). Then, next week, ABC kicks back in w/ the Winter season of 'LOST'...WHOO-HA! Be sure to tune in next time...same Dalek time, same Dalek channel. Bzzzzt.