Billboard recently released its Greatest Rappers of All Time List, naming 10 emcees they believe were the best to ever do it.
While the list brought up a couple questions about its inclusion or perhaps more notably who was excluded, it at least got a conversation going.
HipHopDX recently debated the list as DX News Editor Soren Baker sat down with Features Editor Andre Grant and discussed the inclusions, which includes Kendrick Lamar and Lauryn Hill.
“Kendrick Lamar obviously is tremendously talented and makes a lot of great music even way before he signed with Aftermath,” Baker said via a segment of today’s DX Daily. “I’ve been a fan of his before he signed to Aftermath and he’s a tremendous artist. A lot of people think Section .80 is his best album and that was not backed by a major corporation. That being said, I do believe that To Pimp a Butterfly I didn’t care for it as much as a lot of people and I didn’t think it was good basically on any level almost other than a few songs I didn’t care for it.
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“I think that we are now in the fast food microwave generation to where everything is like ‘instant classic’ and people bestow greatness on things very quickly rather than taking a step back and giving things time to sit and really evaluate it because everything for us is basically at our fingertips and that’s never been,” Baker continues. “It only keeps accelerating. That hadn’t been the case really at any other time in mankind. I think people are so quick to want to have a leader, to want to have someone that they deem is great. Kendrick, in my opinion, isn’t on that level yet, who may be eventually once his career continues and once he keeps putting out high quality material, maybe he does get to that point.”
Baker also talked about who was excluded from the list and agreed with the notion that Tupac is not a Top 10 rapper.
“The music was secondary to [people] believing in him as a leader, as someone with a voice and as someone who they thought was great and obviously who did a lot of memorable things media-wise toward the end of his life,” he explained. “That doesn’t obscure the face that lyrically he wasn’t on the par with some I would consider one of the best rappers ever.”
Watch the full DX Daily segment below:
