Rappers flow toward singing

A change wasn't going to come. By 2005, Aloe Blacc's decade in hip-hop had begun to yield diminishing returns. Though the Orange County-raised rapper had earned underground respect, the genre increasingly favored flamboyant eccentrics like Kanye West and Lil Wayne. Avenues for expansion were scarce — especially for a USC graduate whose press biography touts a love of transcendentalism and French existentialism.

By Jeff Weiss, Special to the Los Angeles Times

November 14, 2010