>The idea that Cee Lo was head and shoulders, as a rapper,
>above everyone else in Goodie needs serious debunking. He was
>just the most straightforward.
>
No, he was the best rapper in the group as far as an all-around MC: voice, flow, lyrics, charisma, quotables, etc.

Gipp second by far & it doesn't really matter that much between Khujo or T-Mo (I'd give the edge in terms of being memorable to Khujo but he had a voice/approach that only held up in small doses before you started feeling like Deebo was shouting at you with overdubbed ad-libs & an echo-chamber).

>Thought Process- Gipp's verse in it's quiet honesty is the
>antithesis of most political/fuck the police verses of that
>era.
>
>Got me by the loose of my pants/ Got me on the curb and the
>traffic passes by/ No questions/ I said nothing/ Looking for
>the mutant to be bucking the law?/ Naw man, Gipp showed em my
>shit, closed my mouth, then I dipped/ Seems to me a G is a
>person who understands the plan/ Can't make no moves when you
>in the hands of the man... the whole verse is great. But that
>right there encompasses the helplessness of being a black man
>being harassed by the cops. Andre has the best verse on the
>song, but let's not act like Big Boi was on this level on
>Southernplayalistic.
>
Like Gipp & agree Big wasn't killing it out of the gate, though he had to carry a lot more water than Gipp did & by ATLiens he eclipsed him.

>Fighting- Yeah, I love Cee Lo's accapella shit at the end but
>is it that Khujo's preceding verse is just too complex or
>esoteric for anyone to appreciate? In my opinion, that is one
>of the most vivid verses I have ever heard, the frustration
>jumps out of the speakers, the imagery puts you right in the
>passenger seat of his car.
>
That & Mainstream are prolly my two favorite verses he ever spit, though I don't really find it to be that complex or esoteric.

>Guess Who- One of the best rap songs about mothers, if not the
>best. Instead of sugary sweet platitudes, all of them really
>deliver different visions of their relationships with their
>mothers. All while eschewing cliches that are so common in
>this type of song (if anyone does give resort to them it's Cee
>Lo, but I love his verse too).
>
this song bores me start to finish & 'who was the first to hold you in some arms' has always made me cringe when I hear it.

>But now that I am giving some examples, I have to say "Soul
>Food" is an all-encompassing piece of art. It's hard to chop
>it up into it's individual parts because at the end of the day
>this album is special because of it's intangibles:
>
>The seamless blending of the street, the spiritual and
>straight up Public Enemy-esque political speech and
>resistance.
>
>The understated production that nonetheless sets the table for
>the lyrics but never fails to complement.
>
>Organized Noize killed this album, but they did so quietly,
>soulful but stripped down and raw as fuck.
>
It's a great album, somewhere in the 30-50 range of rap albums for me all-time.

But to me not one I'd go back to the same was as Aquemini or ATLiens.

More like Southernplayalistic level of quality but for different reasons & just on personal preference I'll take Kast.

>The only rapper in Goodie Mob that Big Boi was better than in
>1995 was maybe T-Mo. I mean...Big Boi could barely stay on
>topic for Git Up, Git Out on his own album in 95. Cee Lo and
>Gipp crushed him on that fam, I mean, come on, Gipp bodied him
>on that.
>
Why were we talking about Big in '95 when I was talking about albums 2 & 3?

I mean both Dre & Big made huge strides from that point, it helped Goodie that Kast broke the seal with their album, it gave them the opportunity (along with ONP) to come into Soul Food a lot more seasoned for their debut.

>I'm not trying to turn this into a post downing Big Boi, who I
>love or Cee Lo, who was the most talented member of Goodie Mob
>by a decent margin. I just want people to stop shitting on
>Khujo and Gipp because they were really good rappers who also
>had the courage to do jump out of the box and challenge the
>status quo on all sorts of levels. I honestly think Gipp is a
>far more thought provoking MC than anyone in DF except Andre.
>
I like Gipp, not gonna knock him. I'll take prime-Kast-era Big over prime-Goodie-era Gipp & Sir Lucious Leftfoot over Mutant Mindframe.

Khujo to me is an aquired taste by comparison & T-Mo doesn't really matter.