Alongside Nelly Furtado’s “Promiscuous,” Chamillionaire’s “Ridin’” was the song of the summer. I heard the song blasting out of cars and on nearly every radio station I tuned into. I couldn’t even escape the rap at work; it appeared on the playlists of the two 40-something receptionists out front who usually blared out Styx’s “Come Sail Away” or Meatloaf’s “I Would Do Anything For Love (But I Won’t Do That).”

And after being exposed to Chamillionaire’s breakthrough for months on end, I’ve come to the conclusion that hardcore crime in rap is dead.

Tipper Gore may be a bitch, but she made one good point: hip-hop is full of violence and sex in the most illegal of forms. For its entire existence, rap has been filled with felonies, from Run DMC’s threats of locking people in trunks to Tupac’s tales of life in Compton.

Before 2006, the weakest crime committed by a rapper was Ol’ Dirty Bastard conning the government out of welfare money. But now Chamillionaire’s “antics” make “Ridin’” about as hardcore as an episode of “Dora the Explorer.”

What exactly is “ridin’ dirty?” A quick stop at the ever-knowledgeable Urbandictionary.com reveals that “ridin’ dirty” refers to “continuing one’s activities after having defecated without wiping one’s anus.”

Adding a “g” to the verb leads to a more appropriate definition: “referenced to driving a vehicle with any form of illegality.” The entry goes on to specify this can range from having “illegal substances” in a car to simply having outdated license plates.

So, what puts the summer hit beside classic crime tunes like “Ride or Die” and “Looking Down the Barrel of a Gun”? Based on the Houston rapper’s choice of slang, he may have just not wanted to wait in a line at the DMV. A closer look at the lyrics reveal Chamillionaire’s tags probably aren’t the cause of his brushes with the law, but his true misdemeanors are just as uninteresting. Chamillionaire’s got a loaded gun in the car (“a full clip and a pistolla,” in one of the biggest stretches for something that rhymes with “controller”) and he is probably smoking weed.

Quite bluntly, these are the lamest crimes he could possibly devote a song to, let alone one celebrating the fact the police can’t catch him. Remember when Wu Tang’s “glock burst, leavin’ you in hearse?” That’s some serious shit. How about Eminem going into detail about how he would rape and murder his mom? That was a felony and Freudian. But Chamillionaire drives around in a car doing stuff straight out of every Cheech and Chong movie ever made and still somehow tops the charts.

Now that the song resembles your typical James Brown high-speed chase, Chamillionaire comes in to deliver his poignant spiel about the police and boasts that the “po-po” don’t have anything to charge him with - even though he spends most of the song talking about his contraband. Instead, Chamillionaire feels he is doing nothing wrong, and attributes his problems to “racial profilin’.”

Now, it’s pathetic enough to think you are king of the hood just because you got a little weed and a gun in your car. It’s even lamer to take pride in the fact the police can’t catch you for a crime you are, in fact, committing. But Chamillionaire crosses the line into pure bullshit when he blames “racial profiling” as the reason the cops are trailing him.

And what’s his final words to the cops? “We hate you.” Yeah, that’s all the pent up rage Chamillionaire can work up. N.W.A. actually showed some teeth when they belted out “fuck the police” back in the late 80’s. Ice T. went as far as to advocate killing the pigs. But all Chamillionaire can muster is a playground-level insult.

“Ridin’” is a definite low point in a genre long celebrated for fighting the law by breaking the law. Even in an age where drug dealing has surpassed outright violence as the dominant subject in rap, at least trappers like T.I. and Young Jeezy actually rhyme about pushing drugs, instead of cruising around with them. Somewhere, Chuck D. is crying into his beret.

But not all hope for an explicit rap scene is gone. Even though Chamillionaire has soiled the mainstream rap scene with his weak offences, some artists still embrace the harsh world around them. Ghostface Killa’s latest release Fishscale, explores the world of peddling cocaine in all its brutal glory, while also featuring a song describing a young Ghost being beat up with a belt. The most impressive example of pure felony however is British MC Sway’s “Pretty Ugly Husband,” a schizophrenic display of domestic abuse. Sway goes from insane husband punching and assaulting his wife to perfect English gentlemen, apologizing for the “misunderstandings between men and women.” The three-minute song is one of the most terrifying rap songs of this decade.

Chamillionaire has done substantial damage to rap’s street-tough image thanks to his Sunday-drive-gone-awry. Hopefully, the fall brings us more captivating crime rhyme than “Ridin.’”