Pop & Hiss will be handicapping the major Grammy categories leading up to the Jan. 31 telecast. Read our picks, and vote for your own, below.

The category: Best rap album

The field at a glance: Three of the last five years, the best rap album went to Kanye West. During the eligibility period for the 2010 awards, West drifted from his hip-hop past, offering up a collection of moody pop with "808s and Heartbreak," and thus opening up the rap album field.

But West isn't the only superstar absent from this category. Due to a one-month advance in the eligibility period from Sept. 31 to Aug. 31, Jay-Z's "The Blueprint 3" missed the window to be considered for the 2010 awards, having been released on Sept. 8. The omission of the 2010 Coachella headliner will be felt, as the album has sold more than 1.5 million copies in just four months, according to Nielsen SoundScan.

What's left, however, is a rather broad snapshot of hip-hop over 2009. Flo Rida maintained his dominance as a singles artist, as his "Right Round" featuring Ke$ha sold more than 4 million downloads throughout 2009. His album "R.O.O.T.S.," however, didn't make the same impact as its individual cuts.

Introspective rapper and perennial nominee Common went the party route with his more lighthearted "Universal Mind Control," and indie-minded artists such as Mos Def and Q-Tip are also represented in the field. Q-Tip's album, "The Renaissance," was released in late 2008 and featured him melding hip-hop and neo-soul, as well as working with an impressive group of collaborators including Norah Jones and Nelly Furtado. It should be the kind of easily approachable album Grammy voters love, but it's far from the biggest success in the category, as Eminem's first album in five years, "Relapse," rounds out the field.

It’s a day of tie dye and top 40 as the faithful descend upon the two L.A.-area arenas.

Jerry Garcia might have died 15 years ago, but ambling through the parking lot of the Forum on Saturday night, you'd have been hard pressed to know he's gone. Two hours prior to the Dead's first L.A. show in more than a half-a-decade, the sun-scorched asphalt was already swarming with people. The scene was a cross between a Renaissance Faire, a Bedouin crossing and the world's most pot-addled family reunion.

Limousines ferrying baby boomers idled next to withered Winnebagos still following a band that first formed nearly 45 summers ago. Rusting school buses cloaked in rainbow Day-Glo paint were packed to the gills with AARP-aged hippies - the strains of "Scarlet Begonias" mingling with the smoke from dirty windows.

Not so far away, at the Verizon Wireless Amphitheater in Irvine, a very different kind of arena show was underway: KIIS-FM's Wango Tango, a top-40 blowout featuring Lady GaGa, Kelly Clarkson and the Black Eyed Peas, in addition to a host of other radio-friendly favorites, attended by hordes of screaming teenage girls.

The weekend concerts illustrated two opposing approaches to being a devoted music fan in today's pop culture landscape: Either embrace every genre and artist with the same open-minded ardor or single-mindedly invest all your energies into the one performer, group or style that defines you.

The singles artist has returned.

Take Flo Rida. By the time his sophomore album, “R.O.O.T.S.,” was released in March 2009, he had already sold more than 2.4-million digital downloads of lead-off single “Right Round,” according to Nielsen SoundScan. In about one month, the album has sold just over 122,000 copies, but in the last week alone, "Sugar," the latest single by Flo Rida (pictured), sold 127,000 downloads, Billboard reports.

And one of the greatest-selling artists of the digital era is back on the charts, proving that he’s no one-hit wonder. Soulja Boy Tell 'Em’s “Crank That (Soulja Boy)” has sold more than 5 million in digital downloads, and his “Kiss Me Thru the Phone,” featuring Sammie, hit the top 10 in spring 2009. But the album it’s on isn’t even in the top-50 on the U.S. pop charts.

Perhaps these are singles that translate better as ring tones than album tracks. Check the video for “Crank That,” which may as well be an advertisement for carrying a data plan, as cellphones are featured as prominently as the artist. The relaxed steeldrum beat is plainly calm, and it's recognizable if blasted out of a tiny speaker in someone’s coat pocket. It’s the song as ring tone.

We take a look at some recent hits to determine whether they work better as a ring tone (meaning we don’t need to hear more than 10 seconds to get the full picture) or as a fleshed-out work.

Read more Better as a song? Or a ring tone?

Two snapshots of the music business were on display on the U.S. pop chart, with Prince's distribution strategy proving to be a bigger winner this week than the one used by rapper Flo Rida.

While Prince landed at No. 2, selling 168,000 copies of his three-disc "LotusFlow3r," released exclusively through Target, Flo Rida struggled to turn success selling digital tracks into album sales.

Flo Rida is a king of digital downloads. Already this year, his single "Right Round," which was released in January, has sold 2.4 million downloads, according to Nielsen SoundScan figures released by Billboard. His song "Low," featuring T-Pain, was the No. 3-selling digital track of 2008, with just under 3 million copies.

Yet both of his full-length albums have had trouble gaining traction, with last year's "Mail on Sunday" and this week's "R.O.O.T.S." selling fewer than 100,000 copies each in their first week. "R.O.O.T.S." landed at No. 8 on this week's chart, selling 55,000 copies.

"The challenge of the entire music business is converting a massive amount of singles buyers out there to album buyers," said James Lopez, Atlantic Records' senior vice president of urban marketing. He added that Flo Rida has sold more than 10 million singles worldwide. On the flip side, Lopez said, Flo Rida's "Mail on Sunday," has sold about 381,000 copies to date in the U.S.

From LL Cool J to Jay-Z and Lil Wayne, hip-hop always has prized larger-than-life icons whose alchemy of skills, style and swagger enabled them to scale the Billboard charts. But with rap finally submerged in the waters of the mainstream, it's only inevitable that it would emulate the superstar-as- cipher model pioneered by its pop kin.

"Right Round," Flo Rida's record-shattering, double-platinum first single from "R.O.O.T.S.," boasts production credits from Dr. Luke, the mastermind behind such smashes as Kelly Clarkson's "Since U Been Gone" and Katy Perry's "I Kissed a Girl." Interpolating Dead or Alive's "You Spin Me Round (Like a Record)," the song recasts rap as Hot Topic teen pop. It's a smart move. Gone are the illusions of hip-hop credibility that dogged "Mail on Sunday." In its stead, Flo Rida's Atlantic patrons have supplied him with billion-dollar beats, gluttonous hooks and a blinding chrome tint.

With an almost eerie facelessness, the Miami rapper inhabits the songs like Armani suits bought off the rack. He's enlisting a who's who of contemporary hit makers: will.i.am. and Akon ("Available,") Timbaland ("Touch Me,") Wyclef Jean ("Rewind,") Ne-Yo ("Be on You,") and Nelly Furtado ("Jump"). Flo Rida boasts an adroit double-timed flow, but his greatest achievement is his understanding of how to stay in the background, never overwhelming the electro-laced tracks.

Even the title song, a narrative of Flo Rida's gritty rise, is swathed in mammoth R&B hooks, baying ad-libs, dollar-sign synthesizers. There's an almost geometric symmetry to "R.O.O.T.S.' " pop precision, one that lends it a ruthless efficacy and anoints Flo Rida the first anonymous rap superstar.

-- Jeff Weiss

Flo Rida
"R.O.O.T.S."
Atlantic/Poe Boy
Three stars

Albums are rated on a scale of one to four stars.