This era in music (hip-hop)

First post in a while but there's a lot going on in the music biz right now let alone the rest of the world so let's get down to it.

VMAs - Kanye is truly a "jackass". I am with Obama whole-heartedly. Everything Kanye does makes his music look more and more ridiculous. I don't truly believe he's sorry for what he's done. He didn't even blame it on the alcohol for what he's done on the VMAs. I don't get why people like him. He's not original. You can dress all "special" like but that doesn't make you an original person. He needs to get over himself and maybe make a decent song. "Gold Digger" is truly the only song I've ever liked by him.

Listening to my iTunes DJ, I was listening to some Fort Minor and observed that Mike Shinoda sounds exactly like Eminem. He's another white guy trying to sound hard to earn respect in a black music genre. In Linkin Park, when he's rocking, he rules, but I think the band under-appreciates and under-uses him under the limelight of Chester, who, by the way, is way too over-rated in the music industry, so I see how he would wanna go out on his own and make raps and get some attention but he doesn't improve anything coming out of Linkin Park. Shinoda, by himself and with his "crew", is laughable. These artists with their vain indulgence all wanna unleash individualistic creativity and prove to everyone how artistic they are like Chester and his "Z-trip" side project abondoning the fundamentals. Z-trip was decent but Chester and Shinoda's exclusive characteristics are best articulated side by side in Linkin Park. Yeah, I understand the band's creativity getting raped by mainstream music producers, but if they wanna have any respect outside of the band they gotta stand up to the industry and demand creative independence. Nonetheless, Shinoda's got nothing on Busta Rhymes. He aint even worthy of appearing in Busta's video "We Made It". Shinoda appearing next to Busta looks ridiculous. Busta's stature is brought down a few levels in that song. What Shinoda's good at is telling stories like in "Hands Held High" from Minutes to Midnight and all his shit on Hybrid Theory. The rap and rock go great together as Chester and Mike Shinoda go great together but when they each stand alone, their music sucks.