When it became known that Vice magazine, the vulgar yet wildly popular trend setting magazine for hipsters young and old, would pair up with CNN, that vulgar yet wildly popular and trendsetting broadcast news channel for people, young and old, who prefer to have their news shoved down their throats, you could almost hear the collective groan across North America. I know because I was there, groaning and scratching my head and thinking this is just another nail in the coffin for a magazine I used to devour for it’s cutting edge, racy and hilarious content, but has gotten kinda soft over the years.

But that was then (way back in January).

Sure the Do’s and Dont’s column is complete crap now that Gavin McInnes isn’t writing it anymore, which is fine because Gavin is much funnier/offensive on his own site, and the whole mag/website just seems like a giant ad for American Apparel, but Vice TV is different. It somehow manages to be cutting edge, insulting and entertaining, and sometimes it just makes for some damn fine journalism.

Case in point: The recent Vice Guide to Liberia, where co-founder Shane Smith travels to the capital of Monrovia and exposes just how truly messed up things still are there after the civil war which ended in 2003. They don’t go right out and say it, but most of Liberia’s problems stem from U.S. intervention (big surprise), and this documentary exposes the living nightmare that is Liberia now.

Not to give it away, but they basically track down former warlords/generals, go on guided tours of slums, brothels and cemetaries, and uncover not only the extreme poverty of the nation, but also how it is literally on the brink of a cannibalistic blood bath. No jokes. Cannibals.

Smith saves the viewers of any typical Vice snark for this straight shooting doc that is sometimes funny, in that whole I can’t believe this warlord’s name is General Butt Naked, and at other times terrifying. You can tell in some scenes that the crew is literally fearful for their lives.

Now back to CNN, the so-called “worldwide leader of news.” They were becoming such a laughing stock that I think a partnership like this actually shows they still have some relevancy left. While it’s great that action hero Anderson Cooper can film himself saving Haitian children and then blog all about it, there is no way he would be as daring/stupid as Vice to walk through malaria infested water barefoot, spree a wanted warlord from jail and visit a brothel at night in possibly one of the most dangerous slums in the world.

Which is why I can get behind a partnership with an organization that will do that (and by that I mean Vice, not CNN, which I still wont watch).

The past few days, hip-hop Tweeters have been debating the latest public statement from Common, made to CNN:

On Saturday, Common said he is already seeing signs that Obama is making a mark on a musical genre often vilified because of its focus on drugs, violence and the degradation of women.

“I also don’t find as much gangsta talk,” he said. “You see the whole chain-shining-and-rim era is gone. That’s like super-played out. Just to have that, I think, is part of the Obama effect.”

Common’s got a weird place in the hip-hop canon. He’s one of the few rappers that can seemingly get away with being semi-preachy, has a decently successful acting career and has managed to clamber onto the B-list without damaging his rap cred. It looks like he’s able to straddle both worlds.

But when he says stuff like this (key words: wishy-washy, “inspiring,” Obama-related) it doesn’t only serve to prove how far Common is moving from the Oh No set toward Oprah and affiliates, it reduces rappers to uncritical, single-minded Obama-drones. How exactly has Obama contributed to the “playing out” of chains and rims? Is this “successful black man” syndrome on hyperdrive? And, is Gucci Mane exempt from Common’s analysis? Because going off the Atlanta rapper’s pro-fuckin’-lific output (and, uh, his name) it doesn’t seem like hip-hop has vanquished vulgarity and/or brandism at all.

I’m not saying hip-hop hasn’t changed. It has. I’ll confess to a penchant for gully-ass street rappers of the baggy-jeans-and-Timbs variety and having to come to terms with the fact that The New Rap is a more plebian version of the jiggy era: obnoxious chains have (mostly, with the exception of homie above) been replaced with overly extensive sneaker collections, a bougie-like appreciation of fine liquers and spirits, and the inclusion of non-traditional (but still ridiculously buxom) bitches. In other words, the materialistic, overtly ‘gangsta’ references to chains and rims have been replaced by analogies that tout accessibility.

So maybe Common is making a link to recession-friendly rap during a recession. But the widening of rap’s pro-capitalism reach was in play long before Obama came into power and, if anything, it’s more insiduous than the shit the Taking Rap Literally task force outlaws. Because, realistically not everyone can buy a chain, but they sure as hell can collect a closet full of Air Force Ones.