Charles Hamilton
Photo: MTV News

In this day and age, everyone is a rapper — and not all these rappers can actually rap. Many are trying to sell you an image on their MySpace.

There's the tough guy dressed in baggy clothes. He's usually aggressively pointing toward the audience in the picture, breaking the fourth wall. There's the former/current drug dealer draped in jewels. As he holds his chains up, his smile reveals a bedazzled grill. Then, of course, you have the intellectual in black-rimmed glasses. His hands are grasped together, but he's not looking at the camera, because he's caught in introspective thought.

Then there's Charles Hamilton. His MySpace page is covered with images of Sonic the Hedgehog and pink typeface. And when you make it to his music player, you realize he's actually a gifted rapper.

Welcome to the Hamiltonization Process.

"The Hamiltonization process is a two-month — no, it was a four-month process of introducing myself," the eclectic rapper explained to MTV News. "Basically, in four months, I did what I could do in 45 minutes if I had the JumboTron in Times Square."

Over that course of time, he released eight mixtapes in rapid succession. Each mixtape chronicled who Charles Hamilton was. Whether it was The L Word, which explained how he views women, or Sonic the Hamilton, which dealt with him waking up and physically being Sonic the Hedgehog, Hamilton was determined to share his point of view with potential fans.

"The whole process is for me to let other people see how I look at the world," he said. He wasn't sure how people viewed him as a rapper. He said he could be considered a passing phase, or "I could be considered the real deal."

The Hamiltonization Process has been therapeutic, the up-and-comer said. While the people he's shared his story with have benefited from it, he's been just as fortunate. "I should be paying the fans for helping me in using this therapeutic art form," he said.

The process helped him reveal some intense things about his past, including drug abuse and being homeless in New York. He said he's thankful for the acclaim, but he's happy to be alive and making music.

"As long as I'm alive, there's always going to be Charles Hamilton music," he insisted. "Whether it's a song, or you just sitting next to me hearing me humming somebody else's song, there's always going to be Charles Hamilton's spin on music."

Also check out Asher Roth, Wale, B.o.B. and Kid Cudi in our "MCs to Watch in '09" series.

• Who Is The Next T.I., Kanye Or Eminem?

• Charles Hamilton

Soulja Boy Tell'em
Photo: Ben Rose/ WireImage

In the world of hip-hop, beef is nothing new. In the early days, rappers would battle to prove who was the superior MC. But that healthy spirit of competition has largely been lost on us.

Recently, beef has become like watching a juvenile high-school dispute. So it's funny that rap's latest beef is between two individuals not too far removed from banging beats on the lunchroom table.

It seems Soulja Boy Tell'em and Charles Hamilton aren't the best of friends. In a video on ThisIs50.com, Hamilton is asked about his recent blowup on Shade 45 Radio, in which he reacted strongly — to say the least — against being compared with Soulja Boy.

"Don't compare me to somebody who made a great marketing ploy when I'm just living my life regular," Hamilton said, adding that while Soulja was smart for taking advantage of the online marketing capabilities of YouTube and MySpace, some of his antics have hurt the chances of other up-and-coming artists.

"It's because of Soulja Boy that the way I live, the 'Sonic the Hedgehog' sh-- that's dead real to me, is considered a joke," Hamilton fumed. The MC, who is known for his love of the "Sonic the Hedgehog" video game (he even released a mixtape called Sonic the Hamilton), said that the way he expresses himself is now viewed as a gimmick. He said he and other artists like Kid Cudi and Cory Gunz's opportunities to gain mainstream acceptance have been spoiled.

Never one to be outdone by an Internet video, Soulja Boy's reply is posted just above Hamilton's video on ThisIs50.com. In what may be a moment of maturity, Soulja Boy almost takes the high road.

"I'd rather take the positive route and not get into beef, and just let you know that it's not my fault that whatever you got going on ain't going right," Soulja Boy said. "You're going to have to go back to the drawing board, get the magic marker, X out the 'Sonic' and you might want to f--- with 'Mario.' "

Soulja Boy said that he's not trying to hurt anyone's career opportunities, and that his goal is to make fun, entertaining, club-friendly music. He even said that he wanted to sign Cory Gunz.

But he also said that Hamilton shouldn't blame any shortcomings on other artists.

"If my next album flops, do you think I'm going to be like, 'Man, it's Lil Wayne's fault. It's T.I.'s fault.' Nah, n---a, it's my fault."

• MTV News RAW: Soulja Boy Tell'em

• Soulja Boy Tell'em
• Charles Hamilton

Kanye West
Photo: Jeff Kravitz

Artist: Charles Hamilton

Representing: Frederick Douglas Academy

Mixtape: Sonic the Hamilton

411: He's signed to Interscope, but that isn't the only thing Charles Hamilton has in common with 50 Cent — they also have the same lawyer and management team. Make no mistake, though: C. Ham is his own man and thinks a lot differently from me, you or anybody else.

"I believe God is a woman, and pink is the color of life because it's the color of inside a woman's womb," he said about his affinity for the hue. He won't be caught dead without it. On the day he talked to Mixtape Monday, he sported custom-made pink Dr. Dre headphones to match his iPod cover and his shirt. "The womb is where all life passes through — leave it to a woman to make something so complex where we would all be fighting over it. God is woman because woman is complex."

Insert disclaimer here: Hamilton isn't a nut. "I'm not crazy," he claimed, before explaining the concept of the latest mixtape in his series of what he calls the Hamiltonizataion process. " 'Sonic' means 'sound.' Hedgehogs bury themselves under the ground. I bury myself into sound. So Sonic the Hamilton, [the concept is] one morning I woke up physically as Sonic the Hedgehog. That's it. ... Every song is like a scene in this movie. I'm dealing with literally being Sonic. My feet look like sneakers, but they are my feet. The white gloves are actually my hands. I'm physically that.

"It's an anthropomorphic creature," he continued. "I'm not human, but I have to live in a world that's human. How are they gonna respond to me? Am I gonna still have fans? Is the government gonna try to get me into some crazy experiment? Am I gonna be killed? All types of crazy stuff is gonna be put into music because that's all Sonic knows how to do. If you think about it, they make it seem like all Sonic's power is running — but, if 'sonic' means 'sound,' wouldn't his power be everything you heard in that game? Music is power. I used to get my ass beat every day after school until I started rapping."

Just a few years ago, the now 21-year-old was cutting class at Harlem's Frederick Douglass Academy to go the school auditorium to play the piano. Instead of detention, the principal nurtured his young pupil's zeal for music and encouraged Charles to take a leap of faith and pursue it professionally. The road from first period to burgeoning Internet sensation was rough for the Cleveland transplant, who once battled heroin addiction and survived a stint of homelessness. He spent plenty of nights at the FDA, recording out of necessity. He had nowhere else to go.

"I learned to sleep standing up," he said, remembering one night where he caught a few winks in the vocal booth.

"I could have said no to the first blunt, I could have said no to the first needle," Hamilton insisted, advising no one to cry any tears for him. "I had my reasons, which made sense at the time. Now I'm feeling the aftermath of it. So I'm not proud of it. I'm proud of how strong I am now. If I can do it again, I'd had a clear mind from the get-go. I'm coming back to reality, slowly but surely, and I'm making this music. If I always had a clear mind, I'd be the Yanni of this generation. It scares me sometimes when I write stuff down."

Charles gets the Mixtape Monday co-sign for being nice. Don't believe us, though: Ask Kanye West, Game, Joe Budden, Pharrell Williams or his cousin — yeah, his blood cousin — MC Lyte, who have all endorsed the young maverick. His album, which he says will be titled The Pink Lava Lamp, will be out next year sometime — he's not rushing it. Hamilton is more than happy to wait for Interscope's three-headed monster of 50 Cent, Eminem and Dr. Dre to put out albums first. In the interim, more mixtapes.

Joints To Check For

» "Two Left Feet (Swaggerless Swag)." "I'm talking about how much swag I don't have," Hamilton said. " 'Swag' is the new word for cool. I'm know I'm not cool. I just do music to the best of my ability. I don't think anybody who's focused on their craft should be worried about how much swag is on the corner for somebody to get."

» "Happy Ending." "[This song] is me being happy to not be human," Charles explained. "Are you ever going to see anything as astonishing as a video game character sitting right in front of you, with the same features you've come to know, love and wonder about? How wonderful would that be? If he has the ability to be a human being, why wouldn't you give him some civil rights to live?"

» "Lemme Know." "That song is my race between me and my imaginary girlfriend who is being personified as a Maserati," he said. " 'Cause I'm Sonic, I can race a Maserati."

Don't Sleep: Other Notable Selections This Week

» DJ Drama and Lil Wayne - Dedication 3
» DJ Woogie and Nyce - Global Warning
» DJ Benzi and Kanye West - Sky High (We Got the Remix Special Edition)
» Lil Wayne - Eat You Alive
» Uncle Murda - Back on My Bullsh--

'Hood's Heavy Rotation: Bubbling Below The Radar

» Joe Budden (featuring the Game) - "The Future"
» DJ Drama (featuring Snoop Dogg and Akon) - "Day Dreaming"
» Common - "I've Been Pimp'n"
» Prodigy - "I'll Sleep When I'm Dead"
» Chris Rock - "Everybody Hate Chris"
» Kanye West - "Say You Will"
» Lil' Kim (featuring T-Pain) - "Download"

The Streets Is Talking: News & Notes From The Underground

Kanye West's G.O.O.D. Music stable is growing by the minute. A few weeks back, we told you about 'Ye signing Kid Cudi. Now we get word that the Chi-town homie found a diamond in the rough all the way out in the U.K. — the blond-haired, blue-eyed soulful singer Mr. Hudson.

"Ah, he's an incredible artist," Kanye told MTV during the MTV Europe Music Awards in Liverpool. "I believe Mr. Hudson has the potential to be bigger than me, to be one of the most important artists of his generation. ... He's playing these songs, he's playing them back-to-back-to-back — 'Dude, I'm telling you, your problems are not going to be getting hit records, blowing up and being a big star — your problems are going to be living real life, and dealing with real life, so just prep yourself.' Everything I hear [from him] is a smash."

Earlier this year, Hudson spent over six weeks in L.A. and Hawaii, working on his second album Now I See. The first release, "There Will Be Tears" (Hudson wrote and produced it himself), is already out overseas and will be dropping domestically soon. Kanye wrote a track on the album called "Supernova" and has about three more songs he wants to do tracks for. The project is set to wrap production at the end of this month. The Brit appears on West's "Paranoid," from 808s & Heartbreak, and the word from his camp is that Kanye threw him on several of Jay-Z's records for the upcoming Blueprint 3.

Hudson joined Kanye, Consequence (Con, what up?) and the rest of the G.O.O.D. Music family on a recent international run of the Glow in the Dark Tour. Kanye says he's been able to incorporate his fresh material into the concert, changing it up from the trek he made earlier this year.

"Well, it's just a completely different show," Kanye said of the international Glow tour. "It's like if you had a new album — it's a completely redesigned show. It's very theatrical. It has a lot of sensibilities — just things that I loved when I was a child that I applied. I'm infatuated with sunsets, so it's pink skies and clouds, and it mixes it with a vibe of space travel and it tells a story line and all the music has been reorchestrated to sound like it was one piece. A lot of times you get songs from different albums and it's just, like, 'That doesn't have anything to do with this, and this didn't have anything to do with that.' " ...

It's always a special occasion when the Clipse drop a mixtape — you know you're going to get a ton of quotables. This time around, though, it really is just the Clipse: Malice and baby bro Pusha T. Unlike the We Got It 4 Cheap series, Re-Up Gang don't appear on this one, for the most part.

"He's on one or two [tracks]," Pusha said of Ab-Liva's contribution — Sandman bolted a few months back. "There is still a Re-Up Gang and a Re-Up Records," he explained.

Clipse are dropping the Road to Till the Casket Drops mixtape in a couple of weeks as a prelude to their album Till the Casket Drops. "The mixtape itself is serious business, lyric-driven," Pusha described. "The energy is there. The energy alone, it's gonna show you the space that the Clipse are in. I feel good right now."

The guys released the mixtape's intro last week, and the full thing should be out right after the Thanksgiving holiday.

"We did the 'Art of Story Telling [Part 4],' " Push divulged. "I love that record. [It] was a task because I think that [Andre 3000] bodied it. Yeah. He bodied it so well that it was tough. I think we did well. Game's 'Big Dreams' was another beat we used. That record was wild. I think we did our thing on there. We did R&B, dawg. We did 'So Fly' and 'Addiction.' The whole process was like picking good records that we heard that were amazing to us. Good music is few and far between these days. ... Oh, we did Lupe's 'Dumb it Down' beat, too. We did a few joints."

Push is hoping the official album comes out on March 10 (one day after the 12th anniversary of the death of his favorite MC, Notorious B.I.G.), but says Sony is looking more towards the beginning of April for the drop date.

"It's like weathering a storm, coming out of it," Push said, talking about his new record deal. "It's a new start, it's fresh. You're around creative people, people like hip-hop executives who understand music. Good vibes around everything. Everybody wants to see us win and [they're] willing to entertain trying a multitude of things to make it happen."

One move was getting Kanye West to cameo on the LP.

"The album is coming along good," Push said. "We got Kanye West on it, rapping. I'm scheduled to get with him and get some music as well. We sort of brought him into our world a little bit and he got off. He's definitely on his rap/hip-hop mode and bodying you with those lines and the quirky cleverness Kanye hits you with. He's the pop-culture king — when it comes to rapping about today and incorporating popular life into verses, he's the greatest." ...

"Van Wilder"? OK, maybe he could see that. But Eminem? Just 'cause he's white? Really? Morrisville, PA, native Asher Roth says that, as an MC, he shouldn't be compared to the iconic Marshall Mathers.

"My music ... I feel has a warm approach to it," Roth began, when discussing the contrasts between his style and Em's. "It's very uniting. Obviously Em is very influential, but his music has an angry tone to it — and it's passionate, so I can't take anything away from that. My whole tip is very relaxed and warm and weed-influenced. I mellow out and enjoy life and not sweat the small stuff. That's all I can do, man — be who I am. Let people say what they want to say. You have to take the love and disregard the hate.

"You have to differentiate yourself," he added. "You say there are preconceived notions about, 'This is a white rapper, he's Eminem.' Now I have to go ahead and say, 'Let me show you why I'm not.' Everyone has their challenge musically. I have to challenge myself and challenge my listeners to understand that this is an entirely different project."

Although the 23-year-old has different subject matter from Em, he will definitely remind you of a young Slim Shady some of the time. Hey, nobody says he's biting the style, but the voice — and the way he can bend abstract metaphors — will draw honest comparisons until Roth completely carves out his own niche and drops his solo debut. SRC, his record company, says to look toward March 17 for that release.

"If you just look at me, man, I'm a white college kid from the 'burbs," Roth continued. "It's visual music. You'll start to see it. That's the thing: As more of my music starts to get released, you get to see the image of who this kid is, through the music. That's my challenge — being able to get people to see and feel and visualize me through my music."

We got a taste of Ash's steez in the hilarious "Roth Boys" Internet video several months ago. Since then, he's been getting co-signs from O.G.s like Cee-Lo, and he and his peer group (which includes Wale, Charles Hamilton and B.o.B) have been mainstays on the Net, becoming blog favorites. That popularity is translating off of cyberspace with an XXL magazine cover and his new video (not the unofficial video that's been floating around) for "I Love College" approaching. (You'll hear a new beat on the video version and album version of the record, because Weezer wouldn't clear the sample of "Say It Ain't So.")

"I feel like as time goes on, people are gonna understand who Asher Roth is as an individual," the smart-aleck MC concluded.

For other artists featured in Mixtape Monday, check out Mixtape Mondays Headlines.

• Mixtape Monday Video: Kanye West, Charles Hamilton & More

• Kanye West
• Clipse
• Charles Hamilton