The World Of Acoustic Hip Hop Covers

I fell down a very deep rabbit hole this morning after Ezra Klein posted this video of a rather rotund heavily bearded and very Caucasian dude (Mat Wettle of Obadiah Parker) playing an acoustic cover of Outkast's "Hey Ya":



(A different video with better audio of the same exists, but is not embedable)

That led to this M.I.A cover...



Which subsequently led me to Marie Digby elegantly covering Rhianna's "Umbrella"...



A little bit of searching on You Tube turned up a couple of more nuggets. The Scared Dinosaurs doing Soulja Boy's "Crank That" (this one might be my favorite):



And One Republic sponsoring a You Tube acoustic cover contest for their song "Apolgize":



At this point I knew it was time to desperately extricate myself before I disappeared completely into the You Tubes. But not before looking for one of the earliest hip hop acoustic covers to go big time, Dynamite Hack taking on "Boys in the Hood". Surprisingly the only thing interesting I could find was a video made out of scenes from one of the more recent Grand Theft Auto games which appears to contain the track...



It's also worth noting that this is a popular genre, at least online, and that several of these videos have well over 1 million views (one of them has been watched more than 12.5 million times)