Capone, "We Are Young"

This is how it should be more often. One of the great things about rap music is how quickly it can take a piece of pop culture and interpolate it into hip-hop. The ease with which a hit song (in this case, Fun’s “Tonight”) can be sampled, looped up, and rhymed over, it’s why rap is the most immediate — and sure, lots of times ephemeral and disposable — vehicle for artistic commentary on the times we live in. This was how 50 Cent rose to prominence ten years ago, a steady stream of roughed-up music, quickly made, often using pop songs or other rap songs that were on the radio, that gave you a very clear idea of what he was thinking about the moment he was recording them. He put them out on black market mixtapes and everybody loved them. Because they were the very definition of “fresh.” Like Biggie said, “It ain’t no more to it.”