On David Letterman's new show, Jay-Z said that music had come a long way since his early days as a rapper. Back in his youth, the MC's job was to be the hype-man for the star attraction - the DJ. As time progressed, however, the MC took the spotlight away from the person making the beats. Music was all about the rhymes, the flow, and wordsmanship that would make William Wordsworth say "Word".
This trend stayed on for so long that most music producers had to learn how to write songs to keep themselves relevant. A look back into the pop catalog for the '90s and '00s reveals that mos....