All Time Top 20 Rap Hits Sweet 16 Bracket (ATT20RHS16B)

Gentlemen (and Lady),

I officially welcome you all to a very interesting project - aka ATT20RHS16B for short. We have quite a list of participants - welcome to everyone (as there are some friends of friends connections). The idea's originator was Jamie Myers, a good friend of mine from college. We've spent many an occasion discussing top 10 lists, best albums, etc. - many of them focused specifically on rap (as we have been fortunate enough to see quite a few interesting live rap shows collectively over the past few years - Big Daddy Kane, Digital Underground, Public Enemy, Slick Rick, Wu-Tang Clan to name a few). But I digress. Through emails with a few of you, we've improved the idea and come up with ATT20RHS16B.

This is built on a few very simple ideas:

* Everyone on this list is a big fan of the rap music
* We all grew up in the heyday of mix tapes
* We're all fans of sports - and the NCAA bracket is an enjoyable work diversion
* We all think our favorite songs are categorically THE BEST songs

So, I challenge each of you to create 1 single CD with 20 (if it can't fit on 1 CD, make it 2 CDs) of your favorite rap songs of all time. There are no other restrictions - interpret words like "best", "favorite", "rap" and "song" as you like. Simply create a CD with 20 songs and send it to us. We will then, via popular vote, attempt to identify the "best" compilation from our submissions.

Each of you should create 1 copy of your CD and send it to either Jamie or myself (your designated recipient is listed below) BY JANUARY 31. We will then copy the CDs and send out a package to each of you with 8 CDs (including your own). So, you will receive a total of 16 CDs. You will have about 2 weeks to listen, review and critique the CDs.

Then the bracket fun begins - we will put together brackets of each person's CD and everyone will get a vote to choose their favorite. The winners go forward to the next round, until we end up with the winner. Brackets will be constructed based on a random drawing of names.

At the same time, we will have a bracket to choose the all-time best rap song. Each person can submit up to 3 of their personal nominees for best rap song when they submit their CD. We will compile a list and put together a random bracket so we can vote on this as well.

Got it?

So, again, send us your 1 CD of your Top 20 Favorite Rap Songs. Please include the following information:

* Title and artist for each song on your CD on some sort of printed listing
* Title of your CD & Your name and address
* Your 3 nominees for Top Rap Song


I am quite excited for this project and have already been poring through old cds, tapes and journal entries to find my top 20 songs.

Good luck gentlemen (and lady)! Any questions, please let me know.

Thanks,