Rappers Turn to Twitter for 140 Characters of Hip-Hop Inspiration

Not content to be outdone by their tech sector counterparts, social media experts and, um, John Mayer, rappers are getting in on the tweetin' action and looking for innovate ways to bring hip-hop and Twitter together.

Admittedly, this usually means little more than MCs and DJs sending @ replies to each other whilst planning to collaborate on a track, hang out, get pizza, or holla at each other...but, occasionally, something slightly more eyebrow-raising surfaces.

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In this case, the rapper in question is K'naan, an up-and-coming Somalian (by way of Toronto) hip-hop artist whose "dusty foot philosophizing" and recently released second album Troubador have caught the attention of many hip-hop heads and at least a small slice of the Twitterverse.

K'naan is on Twitter and, similar to John Mayer asking for Hemingway-style short stories from his followers, the rapper has a keen interest in keeping his fans involved in his online creative processes.

Or maybe he's just starved for ideas.

Either way, K'naan and Universal have come up with the too-clever-to-ever-be-good Tweet contest of getting K'naan's fans to tweet "clever rhymes" with the #knaansong hashtag, from which the rapper will reportedly "cobble together 'the best tweets' to create a new Frankentrack, which will be available for free download on both his Twitter page and official homepage."

There are several problems with this:

1) Rapping on Twitter?

2) 140 character rhymes?

3) A song made from 1) and 2)?

While we'll be eager to hear the finished result, this choice of format isn't doing anybody any favours, musically or artistically, and it seems like a pretty hackneyed and zeitgeisty decision to hop on the Twitter bandwagon just because it's presumed to be popular — not because it's a good platform for songwriting.

Then again, this might birth a whole new hip-hop sub-genre of collaborative tweet rap.

You heard it here first.