And yeah...I have two ties...So sue me...Shit was tough...




1.Rakim (The MC who set the bar for all to come...Took the baton from Melle Mel and never looked back)

2.Jay-Z (He wins with his longevity folks...He's making it cool for a 40 year old MC (the death knell age range for most MC's)to compete with the Drakes of the world...Like Run-DMC, Jay has made hip-hop a viable "touring genre"...This is shocking considering that Jay early on had the stage presence of a dish rag...His impact is hard to ignore...)

3. Nas (He's the Rakim for the third generation of hip-hop fans...He raised the bar for his peers...They chased him...They wanted to be him...Not to mention Nas made quite possibly the greatest diss record of all time and took on the most powerful rapper in the game and more than survived...He was celebrated...)

4. KRS-One (His longevity is equaled only by LL and Jay-Z....Kris kills you in all areas...from the stage to lyrical concepts to socially conscious statements to straight up battle records...He did it all...The most well-rounded MC in hip-hop history...)

5. Biggie/Scarface (Tied)----(Biggie's time on this earth was short...But I compare his artistic and cultural impact to say Jimi Hendrix...He was so great that he shifted the culture, business and art of MCing...Suddenly it wasn't enough to be just a great MC...You had to be lovable, charismatic, commercial and DOPE...That was Biggie...No, he's not no. 1 like many tap him to be...But he was GREAT...)

Scarface? (The father of southern MC's who was the Rakim for a lot of kids coming up in that region...All you have to do is listen to the Diary album to figure it...No one rhymed about death, pain and redemption as eloquent as Face...NO ONE....)

6. LL Cool J...(The man that built Def Jam, the most important hip-hop label of all time...He is the template for the solo MC...He has so many first I would be here all day...But the most impressive one besides his enduring ability to stay in the game for close to two decades? He showed that you could indeed make a comeback in hip-hop...Who knew?)

7. Ice Cube (No need to explain...Dude could make a million Are We There Yets and that still would wipe out his immense legacy...He wrote those rhymes for NWA folks...And I'm talking about classic NWA...Then dude flipped the script and made quite possibly the greatest 1-2 punch of albums in hip-hop (Amerikkka's Most and Death Certificate)....Just wow...)

8. Andre 3000 (I don't care if he's part of a duo...we know how underrated Big Boi is...We know he deserves praise...But Dre? Let's be clear...Dude simply changed the whole template for what a great MC is, especially for southern MCs...Scratch that...Three Stacks transcended labels...At times his wordplay borderlined on genius...)

9. Pac (No he wasn't better than your favorite "lyrical" MC...But no one could pull the emotion out of a song like Pac....You felt it--good or bad....You cheered him...You denounced him...You mourned him...He was larger-than-life...More rock & roll than hip-hop...)

10. Chuck D/Slick Rick (Tied)---(again...no need to write a novel here...Listen to It Takes A Nation and watch some of those PE tours from the late '80s and early 90's and get back to me.....Slick Rick? He's still the most effective storyteller of all time...It's not even a debate...)




I didn't have BDK in my top 10...But that's only because there's a shit load of MC's that get the nod before him...Not an indictment of Kane...As for the 150 pound White Boy in the room? Well, I would not be mad if someone had Eminem in their top 10...But I wouldn't have him top 5....Also, Melle Mel is another MC that deserves a mention...He def. has Top 10 chops...But he's the odd man out unfortunately...

Redman is easily in the convo....(In fact, he's no. 11, but that's another list)....