Hip-Hop Inventors Hall of Fame
The story goes that Diddy had so much money lying around his crib that he didn’t know what to do with all those Benjamins. So, he tossed the money in T-Pain’s direction and said, “Take that, take that.”
“Puffy, whatchu giving me all this money for?,” queried a wide-eyed T-Pain. Diddy paused for a second, removed a gold-crested toothpick from his mouth and replied, “That’s for letting me use Auto-Tune on one of my joints. You invented that bad boy, right?”
Yeah, Diddy paid T-Pain royalties for using Auto-Tune. “Diddy actually gave me royalties on this album just for using Auto-Tune,” bragged Mr. Pain in a recent MTV interview. “He signed the contract and everything. If I can do that with Diddy, somebody else better be signing something.”
Well, in the spirit of paying people for trends they didn’t invent, let’s take a look at some hip-hop artists who deserve to get paid for being innovative. Here’s a rundown of the 5 most innovative hip-hop artists of all time and their respective inventions.
KanYe West:
- Sped-up soul samples
- Pink backpacks
- Adult tantrums
Jay-Z:
- Coke rap
- Lyrical swaggerjacking
- Fake retirements
50 Cent:
- Rap beef
- Mixtapes
- Vitamin Water
Lil Wayne:
- Market saturation
- Locks
- Styrofoam cups
Puff Daddy/P-Diddy/Diddy/Sean Combs/:
- Multiple Personality Disorder
- Mainstream rap
- The remix
