The Next Bob Dylan is...

The next Bob Dylan is not a folk singer. You're not going to hear those reassuring strummy G and C chords played on an acoustic guitar. There will be no harmonica and you might even have a hard time understanding the lyrics at first. Critics have waited for 40 years to elect a successor and along the way have anointed such disparate talents as Billy Bragg, John Prine, Willy Nile and more recently Conor Oberst as the saviours of the message.

And speaking of The Message: "Don't push me cause I'm close to the edge". Or how about "Elvis was a hero to most, but he never meant shit to me". Are you getting close? The next Bob Dylan is...Hip-Hop! And you missed it! Prowling around the alleys of Greenwich Village looking for some scruffy Literature major was a waste of time, professor. Perhaps it's time to trade in that corduroy jacket with the scholarly leather elbow patches for a pair of Adidas.

Grandmaster Flash, KRS One, Public Enemy, NAS, Kanye West, Eminem. Hip-hop artists have been turning out socially conscious, politically astute, radical and revolutionary work for the past 25 years, but because it has a beat, it has largely eluded the cultural elite. Hip-hop is the driving force in music today and is the replacement beat of this generation in the same way that rock n roll usurped swing in the 50's. Hip-hop is the most articulate, incendiary, socially relevant and yes, literary voice in music. There are no rock acts that take such delight in wordplay as Kanye West or Lupe Fiasco. Just as Dylan did in his prime, these artists bowl you over with their articulate rage, their scalding sense of humor and their apocalyptic visions.

So in the words of Biggie Smalls: "And if you don't know, now you know".