The Most Overlooked Hip-Hop Song of 2007

In hip-hop, as in many other genres of music, quality songs often go unnoticed while mindless drivel plays in heavy rotation on the airwaves. Talib Kweli's album "Eardrum" was one of the top hip-hop releases of the year, but it got little attention from mainstream media. Meanwhile, rap's latest clown-in-residence, Soulja Boy, has saturated TV, Internet and radio with a song that is inherently mindless and a dance that looks like it was choreographed by a first-grader.

The sales beef between Kanye West and 50 Cent was the most talked-about story of the year, but Chamillionaire's album "Ultimate Victory" was better than both of their albums and sold less than one-tenth of either one.

Clearly there's a lot of great music that goes overlooked. So when choosing this year's most overlooked hip-hop song, I used a few main criteria. One, the song had to be high-quality and worthy of attention. Two, the song had to come from a popular artist who had garnered considerable attention. And three, that artist had to have at least one enormous single during the year.

Based on these criteria, the choice was easy: "Let's Get This Paper" by Rich Boy. You probably know Rich Boy for his smash single "Throw Some D's." The concept of that hit wasn't terribly complicated: take a hot beat from up-and-coming producer Polow Da Don and rap about throwing some rims on your new Cadillac. Lather, rinse, repeat.

The song got heavy rotation on BET, MTV, radio and clubs, and peaked at No. 6 on the Billboard Chart. The remix was produced by resident crunkmaster Lil Jon and featured Andre 3000, Jim Jones, Nelly, Murphy Lee and The Game. Not bad for an artist no one had heard of in mid-2006.

Sure, "Throw Some D's" is catchy. But like much of what plays on the radio, it's largely unintelligible and ultimately meaningless. Juxtapose that with "Let's Get This Paper," by far the best song on Rich Boy's debut album, and one of the most important hip-hop songs of the year.

Don't be fooled by the title, this isn't your typical "I-sling-crack-and-pimp-hos" rap garbage. From the opening notes of Polow Da Don's menacing backdrop of horns, bongos and shivering strings, it's clear that Rich Boy is serious, which is a welcome change of pace.

On the majority of his album, Rich Boy is detached and difficult to understand. Which really isn't that much of a problem, because most of the time he's not really saying anything. But on "Let's Get This Paper," not only is Rich Boy understandable, he's passionate. This is not the laid-back phone-in of a song, when a rapper takes three tired themes, recycles them into a bland, casually destructive mixture and churns out something that will bang in the clubs and be quickly forgotten.

Here, Rich Boy enters the realm of funk-laced hip-hop protest music, actually analyzing conditions in the hood and examining why people resort to the shady activities they engage in. The song's template is basically just snippets of pissed-off people talking about how messed up the system is in between Rich Boy ripping apart everything from the war in Iraq to bogus jail sentences. You can actually hear the fire in Rich Boy's voice. You can actually tell he cares. It's refreshing.

And something about the convergence of all these things: the urgency of the beat, the urgency of Rich Boy's rhymes, the random angry speeches, not to mention the gospel choir in the background, makes the song an emotional masterpiece. At several points throughout the song, you're likely to feel sad. And it's not a negative sadness, it's the feeling you have when you finally see something clearly and it overwhelms you in all its truth.

That's quite an accomplishment for hip-hop music nowadays, which is more likely to induce nausea than stimulate an epiphany.

Unfortunately, "Let's Get This Paper" isn't simplistic and devoid of substance, so it will never see the mainstream light of day, and Rich Boy will likely continue to be known for "Throw Some D's." But "Let's Get This Paper" is an exquisite song and an example of what's possible when rappers actually speak from the heart instead of digging in the recycle bin to craft their latest hit.