[analogbear]

Originally Posted by QuikMike

Common(formerly known as Common Sense)
Talib Kweli
MosDef
Will Smith(I'm sure you've heard of him...he used to be a "hip hop idiot" before becoming a movie star...just an FYI for ya)
The Roots(a band full of "hip hop idiots")

....blanket statements are dangerous....

All generalizations are blanket statements, as are all truisms...But these things evolve the way they do not because they are the exception, but because they are, in fact, the rule...

To address your examples,
The Roots, an alright backing band, but not any kind of musical geniuses...Other bands (made up of mostly white dudes) were doing what the Roots do (serving as a live background band for select contemporary black artists, and putting out some eponymous material too) all the way back in the 50s-60s (Motown Sound) and even again as discrete funky-jazz/Hip-Hop fusion acts in the 70s-80s-90s (Chick Corea, Dave Grusin-Faith No More-Rage /Chili Peppers, etc...) I like the Roots, but I do not elevate them to level of significance with which they are viewed in the Hip Hop community.

The other two legit dudes are Mos Def, who I love as a poet and actor; and Will Smith who seems to be a very talented renaissance man...To paraphrase Doogie Howser in Undercover Brother, Will Smith "raps happy..."

The other two? A waste of space.

Originally Posted by nedro

ABSOLUTELY!
But not all Hip hop artists are idiots.

Yes, because they all attempt to perpetuate a negative, counter-culture stereotype, and yet Hip Hop has become pretty mainstream culture now...So, because they are not true to themselves or society as a whole, they are all idiots...