It used to be an unspoken rule in hip hop that you HAD to be authentic. You couldn’t talk about anything if you hadn’t lived it. But now, it seems as if “image” is worth more than the truth. If you have the flash (cars, jewelry, the clothes and the hoes), nothing else matters.

Everyone seems to have sold kilos and no one was just a regular Joe Schmo before their rap careers took off, or before they got down with a team that co-signed that they were the next big thing in the game. It’s more acceptable nowadays to lie to everyone — your team, your fans and to yourself — than to actually stay true to yourself. Now, while rappers lying about their pasts is nothing new in hip hop (remember Vanilla Ice & his homemade thuggish bio?), it’s becoming more prevalent.

The problem with this is that the artists are lying to themselves and then lying to their fans. Once the artists get caught, they try to weasel their way out of it by denying their past, which, in turn, insults their fans’ intelligence. Don’t believe me? Lets take a closer look at Alfamega, a man who’s kept himself in the news for the past few weeks.

For the uninitiated, Alfamega was originally down with Tip’s Grand Hustle. He was publicly kicked out of Grand Hustle by his boss via a radio interview once word leaked that Alfa was a DEA informant. After the information about Alfa’s past came out, he laid low and quietly tried to dismiss the rumor. Recently, his assertions that he’s not a snitch have been getting more loud and more vocal.

First, a video surfaced this week with Alfa proclaiming that he had never worked for the DEA and he had no clue who put that “rumor” out there. (Well, Mr. Alfamega, let me help you solve this riddle for you. No part of this rumor came via word of mouth, nor was revealed in a diss song — it was proven in actual court documents by The Smoking Gun that you indeed did snitch on others to get a reduction in sentence for your gun charge.) Contrary to what has been proven, Alfa still holds fast to his belief that he didn’t snitch. Taking a page from Officer Ricky’s book, he still continues to deny, deny, deny, as if that will make this whole situation go away.

Doing a video interview did not help his case either, as he sounded incredibly stupid continuing to lie. Then came the letter to Tip. Apparently, Alfamega had some things that he needed to say to his old boss, and was instructed to write TIP. So he did. But, he pulled a female move by releasing the letter to the blogs. What exactly was that supposed to prove? That you still cant keep anything in confidence? You still cant keep your mouth shut about personal business? Last time I checked, taking private business and making it public is considered snitching (and bitch made).

See, the thing that irks me most about this whole situation is how Alfamega handled it. Instead of manning up and telling the truth, he thought that he was smarter than everyone else, including his fans and even people that have just HEARD his music but weren’t necessarily fans of it. Whatever you’ve done in the past, be a man about it and just admit it. You can at least gain respect for telling the truth. But continuing to lie about it? Insulting everyone’s intelligence with your feeble attempts to sweep this under the rug? Vehemently denying it amounts to just plain stupidity. If you wonder why folks aren’t f-cking with you anymore, it’s because they crave authenticity, which sadly, is missing not only from Alfamega, but in hip-hop as a whole.

We have got to do better.