Though humanity's musical tastes and preferences have always been unpredictable and surprising (really, people? Milli Vanilli? Michael-F*CKING-BOLTON?!?!) there is one thing you will be able to tell our future robot overlords with absolute certainty: When it comes to music, we LOVES us some child stars (bonus points for including them in a family and/or boy band -- do this and we will literally hand you a large pile of money and our emotional stability, no questions asked).
Now, pop music has seen its fair share of young stars over the years, like Hanson, the Jonas Brothers and the Thing They Call Bieber, but I think it's high time hip-hop get its due.
The last twenty years has produced a laundry list of young rap stars, including notables like Bow Wow, Lil Wayne, Kris Kross, Shyheim, Da Youngstas, and Young Chris, to name a few. Some have capitalized on their young celebrity more successfully than others (Lil Wayne becoming a father at 15, for example), while others remained one-hit-wonders.
Yet, with the September signing of Will Smith's 10-year-old daughter Willow to Jay-Z's Roc Nation and 15-year-old Diggy Simmons landing at Atlantic in March, it has become clear that 2010 is a great time to be young (and rhyming about the injustice of a 9PM bedtime).
This is a recession, after all, and everybody has to pitch in (no matter what age), so here is our list of the 7 best rappers who aren't even old enough to ghost-ride the whip.*
best rappers under 12
*Correction: We initially titled this post 'The 7 Best Rappers Under 12,' but soon realized a few of the candidates were slightly older. We added a few more lil' rappers suggested by our readers, and edited the headline to reflect both changes.