Byron Crawford

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Byron Crawford, also known by the nickname Bol, is a blogger based in Saint Louis, Missouri who writes ByronCrawford.com and a regular online column for XXL magazine. While Crawford bills Byroncrawford.com "the only hip hop blog on the Internet", he also regularly reviews music from other genres and writes on 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 rappers such as Bun B and Lupe Fiasco have boosted his profile considerably over the past few years.^{[citation needed]}

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 ?uestlove, the Roots drummer named several rappers that regularly read his blog.^{[citation needed]}

He has also invented and/or popularized a number of slang terms, such as "nullus" which he uses to deny his homosexual prefrences and has popularized the use of "ether" as a verb meaning "to destroy".^{[citation needed]}