It’s a wrap for Rap City?

It looks like BET has pulled the plug of the hip-hop oriented series after 21 seasons.

Approximately a year ago, the show moved to a 1am slot; a move in which most people thought would be the ushering out of Rap City. Apparently the final episode was aired on September 19, 2008. A finale of the program is in the works.

Effective November 10, Rap City will be replaced by “The Deal”, a new hour long video series hosted by DJ Diamond Kutz, and patterned by the original show.

I’m not sure what the folks at the house Bob Johnson built are doing over there. But I could think of at least five programs that should be axed. To entirely wipe out an effective outlet for hip-hop artist from the underground to mainstream is in my opinion misguided. TRL got the boot and now Rap City. Why Viacom, why?

Hopefully “The Deal” will garner the same notoriety as Rap City.

See the homey “LowKey” for more info.

Here’s a Rap City Timeline (bought to you by Wiki):

The show was created by former BET VJ/producer Alvin Jones, a.k.a "The Unseen VJ". This was a spin-off of the "Rap Week" segment of Video Vibrations, also hosted by "The Unseen VJ".

While its competitor Yo! MTV Raps, which is now discontinued, mainly focused on all of the popular rappers, Rap City also included videos from up and coming underground rappers.

The program also has a Weekly Top 10 Countdown that aires on Saturdays. For 1991-1994, it was known as the "Top 10 Rapdown", when Prince Dajour (who also hosted Teen Summit) was host.

Among notable previous hosts of the show are Chris Thomas, (The first host of the show from 1989-1991). Throughout his run, Thomas was also known as "THE MAYOR OF RAP CITY", or The Mayor. Other hosts: Hans Dobson (1989-1991), Prince Dejour (1991-1994), Joe Clair (1994-1999), and Leslie Segar (a.k.a. Big Lez) (1994-1999).
On September 13, 1999, the show was re-titled Rap City: Tha Basement and newly hosted by Big Tigger (a.k.a. Tigger), who succeeded Joe Clair and Big Lez. On August 28, 2000, BET moved the show to a new time slot at 4 p.m.

On January 21, 2005, the show was repackaged and host Big Tigger was replaced by Mad Linx, a DJ and radio personality. The transition was explained that Tigger's "mother" sold the basement and forced Big Tig out to live with his father.

On October 3, 2005, Mad Linx went on hiatus to host BET Road Show. For several weeks, the show was hosted by J-Nicks, a native of St. Louis. Occasionally, special guests (such as a hip hop star) would host Rap City. The network also shortened the shows run time from two to one hour.

On December 28, 2005, BET returned the show to its original 5 p.m. time slot. Mad Linx returned to his weekday routine on February 2, 2006. J-Nicks left to work as a weekday radio DJ for WHTA Hot 107.9 FM in Atlanta. On August 24, 2006, Q45 replaced Mad Linx on the show. On September 25, 2006, the time slot for Rap City changed to 4 p.m., and then flipped back to 5 p.m. in October 2006. From that moment on, Q45 hosted the show on Weekdays. Mad Linx hosted Rap City Top 10 on Saturdays and Big Tigger hosted the show as Rap City Presents... specials.

On September 17, 2007, BET changed the timeslot of Rap City to 1 a.m. Eastern Time. A timeslot previously held by re-runs of The Parkers and other syndicated shows. In the timeslot that Rap City previously occupied, random music videos are now being shown. In October 2007, due to drop of ratings Rap City returned to its previous time slot at 5 p.m.