By now Fox’s hit drama 24 has been debated ad nauseum by such illustrious media outlets as The New Yorker and The Spin’s own “Dan “Da Bricks” Brickley. With that in mind I felt compelled to address members of the Blogsbe Nation about Monday night’s other Primetime hit, Vh1’s the white rapper show.

Already in its sixth episode, the white rapper show has been blowing away preconceived notions about hip-hop authenticity the way Jack Bauer blows away terrorists and traditional conceptions of habeus corpus. The show follows the lives of 10 aspiring rappers of the light-skinned persuasion as they cohabitate the aptly titled White House in the Bronx and compete to avoid “impeachment” through a series of tests of hip-hop knowledge and rhyming ability.

As a white kid from Northern California’s wine counry whose first album purchase was Warren G’s Regulate…G Funk Era I’m enthralled by the concept of the show and the characters it showcases. The show raises the question what is hip-hop about?

Is it about the hood you grew up in? Is it about the clothes you wear? Is it about the politics or philosophy you preach? With characters like Persia, Jus Rhyme and $hamrock all legitimately vying for the mantle of the next successful white rapper, the answer isn’t clear.

Hip-hop means a lot of things to a lot of people. For me it was a window into another world vacant from the suburbs of Santa Rosa. For Vh1’s white rappers it’s about a life’s dream and defying stereotypes the way Jack Bauer defies the Geneva Conventions. And if you don’t know, now you know.

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