Byron Crawford

Byron Crawford (March 4, 1981-), also known by the nickname Bol, is a blogger based in St. Louis, Missouri who writes ByronCrawford.com and wrote a daily (Monday-Friday) online column for XXL magazine for 5 years. In February, 2008 XXL readers voted that Crawford was the site's best blogger by a margin of over sixteen percent . Byroncrawford.com won Hip Hop Connection's 2008 Hip-Hop Blog World Cup, which deemed it the best hip hop blog of the year . While Crawford bills Byroncrawford.com "the only hip hop blog on the Internet", he also regularly reviews music from other genres and writes on politics and race and gender relations. Brian McManus of Philadelphia Weekly called Crawford "blogging's master craftsman" for his opinionated but laid-back writing.
While past reports have calculated Crawford's blog as only having 40,000 unique readers, his addition to XXL magazine's roster of online columnists and publicized feuds with artists, their fans, and their family, including Bun B, Lupe Fiasco, Kanye West, Donda West, and Joe Budden have boosted his profile considerably over the past few years. The Riverfront Times claims that Byroncrawford.com gets more traffic than the sites for Vibe and Spin magazines.
Crawford gained notoriety in 2004 when he reported that rapper Kanye West's single "Jesus Walks", which had just been nominated for a Grammy Award, was written by and bought from rapper Rhymefest, and began a petition to disqualify the song.
Rapper Phonte of the group Little Brother has spoken out in support of Crawford, and Crawford claims that during a meeting with Questlove, the Roots drummer named several rappers that regularly read his blog.

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