Capitalism Gangsta Style: Irv "Gotti" Lorenzo, founder of Murder Inc., announced recently that the record company has changed its name to The Inc. The jury's out whether the chairman of the board will give up his gangsta moniker "Gotti" in favor of something more like Capitalist Tool.

Gotti said the name change is meant to shed any negativity surrounding his business. He revealed that he initially intended to name the label Lockdown Records.

When Gotti saw the story of the real Murder Incorporated gang on television, he decided to use it, hoping to create a name he could brand, such as Death Row or Bad Boy.

According to a recent article in the Guardian, hip hop's mania for endorsing brands makes street music big in the boardroom.

Such is the symbiotic relationship between hip hop and big business that marketing guru Lucian James created American Brandstand, which lists weekly the brands that feature in the lyrics of songs in the American chart.

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Some artists are said to be paid to incorporate brand names into their lyrics, an accusation levelled at Rhymes following 'Pass the Courvoisier'. Rhymes and Allied Domecq deny the claim.

Ya think? The power of hip hop artists like Busta Rhymes to reach a young audience of impressionable minds is not missed by brand masters like Richard Branson, who recently hired the rapper to star in a series of entertaining adverts for a Busta Butt campaign for Virgin Mobile.

Corporate interests are buying control in the hood; witness the acquisition of Russell Simmons' Def Jam Records by Universal Music Group. It's big bidness; what the Feds call "organized crime." And the entertainment industry needs to clean up the gangsta image of hip hop, as it did the mobster image of Las Vegas.

The 2003 Grammy Award nominations announcement, dominated by hip hop, rap and R&B artists, is noted as a significant benchmark in the acceptance of the music of the street into popular culture, worldwide.

Hip-hop, both the music and the lifestyle, have slowly taken over the world in which you live. Television, magazines, radio and video games have all jumped aboard. The aging public and the music industry are among the last to recognize the genre's immense output and goliath success, but that's changing, too.

You gotta kno dat hip hop is takin' over da world when the communist government of the People's Republic of China is remixing Mousie Tongue.

Now, as they approach the 110th anniversary of Mao Tse-Tung's birth, Dec. 26, the people of China - a country the old murderer would scarcely recognize anymore - are going to get a chance to refresh their memory of one of his key dictums, the Two Musts, in the form of rap music.

It's not altogether a message that matches the hip-hop lifestyle which we in the West know so well from videos, CDs and court cases. The Two Musts run like this: "to preserve modesty and prudence, and to preserve the style of plain living and hard struggle."

As lifestyle advice, this seems to leave little room for bling-bling, hos, nose candy, late nights and big cars. Still, the rap format has been adopted by many Chinese performers and is popular with Chinese audiences (formerly known as "the masses"). Talk about your cultural revolutions.

Will rap music be credited with the demise of communism in China, as rock and roll has recently been credited with the end of communism in eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union? Will rap be the language of cultural revolution in the Far East and in the Middle East? Fo' shizzle...