Andover's Rap Crew Was Not Invited to the Obama Hip-Hop Barbecue

In case you missed it, President Obama threw a "hip-hop barbecue" yesterday for his birthday, which somehow failed to create jobs. Or so shrieks this headline from Fox Nation, Fox News' aggregation organ. Non-hip-hop artists Stevie Wonder and Herbie Hancock performed while "Rome burned" (look at the URL). The race-baiting and unethically edited aggregation have been mentioned elsewhere, so we'll raise a somewhat different question: where was Philips Andover's stable of up-and-coming young rappers during the Obama Hip Hop BBQ, such an important event in the genre?

Some students at tony Massachusetts prep school Andover produced an eight-minute long hip-hop anthem devoted to their school, where the tuition is over $40,000 for boarding students. It's called "The Andover Song" and you can buy it on iTunes. Sample rhyme: "Academics epidemically engulf the campus /Intensity's the norm, nobody's warm to slackness."

We've been trying to contact the director of the above joint all morning and will update if he gets back to us.

There is one good thing that came out of the OHHBBQ, though, despite Andover's snub: the #hiphopbbqacts hashtag, which inspired such dishes as "Lupe Tabasco" and "Ludacrispy Chicken."

[rgray@villagevoice.com] [@_rosiegray]