Duck of the Irish, I'm absolutely with you on that one. The monotony and tyranny of the beat is what drives me away from embracing the genre wholeheartedly, despite what I consider to be the importance and sometime high quality of the lyrics. There are very interesting things being done with the language of rap and hip hop--fascinating things that are highly original. But the beat really drags down too much of it for me personally. I can love Ja Rule, because he has that R & B melody thing he is doing with the beat, but then lyrically, I don't think his stuff is as strong as Dre, or NWA, or some of the hardcore stuff.