The strangest hip-hop diss ever...

I was skimming the reviews at the back of Blender Magazine (I signed up for a free subscription a while ago) and one of them was of Will Smith's new album. It mentioned the song "Mr. Niceguy", saying that it was his attempt at dissing all his haters (and not doing too well at it).

So naturally I downloaded it off eMule, and was rather surprised to hear that he refers to libertarian black radio host and author Larry Elder as an "uncle tom".

It's been a while since I've read Larry's books (although oddly enough I just bought a copy of Showdown because it was 25¢ in the clearance section of Target). However, the only coverage I remember him was in the positive sense - that he was one of the few rappers who doesn't curse ect. Maybe this is an attempt at an inside joke, or maybe he's pissed because Elders has ruined his street cred by endorsing him (never mind that the Fresh Prince of Bel Air is probably more responsible for ruining his street cred than anything else).

I did a search of Larry Elder's website, and the only mention of Will is this article about the sucess of blacks in Hollywood. And it's not exactly recent, considering that it uses the words "recently" to refer to "Men in Black".

There doesn't seem to be much on the web about this conflict, except for this guy's blog and this message board discussion that is focused more on Eminem vs Will Smith than anything else.

So I guess I'll have to keep wondering if Will dissed Larry for ruining his street cred, or if there is more to this hip-hop battle. Will it be the next Jay-Z vs NAS? For some reason, I think not.