Urban culture has always gotten a bum rap on TV, with almost all of the venues screwing the pooch. But about five years ago, a shining example emerged on that station that used to be for old folks, VH1. VH1 Hip Hop Honors is the best hip hop event on television, with the possible exception of The Boondocks. The show manages to show respect to the culture without becoming too reverential or pandering too much to current trends. I even, after much resistance, have even come to appreciate the karoake like tribute performances not as an affront to authorship, but a tribute to style and swagger that is the real foundation of hip hip. Once again, the inductees were great, although I thought that Naughty By Nature was a stretch. It's a very open minded show that can acknowledge both the pimp talk of Too Short and daisy age positivity of De La Soul.

But what I'm worried about is who they are going to honor next year, because I don't want to join the tide that's already written about this year event. So I got a short list of artist that I would want to be honored in the best way possible.

• EPMD: It actually felt like this group should have been in the balcony getting honored rather than performing for De La Soul, which I view more as their contemporaries. I wrote the exclusion off to the twosome being from Strong Island as well. EPMD influence could be traced more to their direct lineage of artist, which includes Red Man, Keith Murray, Das Efx, and many others.
• DJ Quik: No other artist other than the Good Doctor himself had as a profound effect on what West Coast hip hop sounded like. It seemed the only thing that stood between Dr. Dre acclaim and Quik was the backing of Death Row Records and Quik's silly beef with MC Eiht.
• Luke: I didn't really get the big deal about 2Live Crew, who sounded like a bunch of soused up drunks, but Luke as a solo artist had every club on lock at a certain part of the '90's. It would seem that it would be hard to include a rapper that didn't rap, but I see him as a symbol of pre-Outkast southern rap that was magical in it's capacity to get asses shaking.
• UGK: I won't no questions on this one, this group epitomizes the heart and soul of what southern hip hop is about. I still can't get over Pimp C saying that UGK didn't make hip hop songs but country rap tunes. It was a decidely "post-lyrical" statement that resonated with a lot of southerners.

To view more pics of this years Hip Hop Honors click here