Lloyd Banks is famed for his lyrical ability, but now the self-proclaimed Punchline King has revealed who he believes are the best punchline rappers ever.
During a recent appearance on ESPN’s Jalen & Jacoby podcast, Banks was credited by former NBA player Jalen Rose for his “historic” punchlines, bars and hooks since he came onto the scene at a young age, before asking him to reveal his favorite punchline rappers of all time.
The New York rapper didn’t take long to pick Big L, Lord Finesse, Jadakiss and Fabolous in his top five, while also rounding off the list with himself.
Lloyd Banks is no stranger to giving respect to his peers and rappers who came before him. During a recent interview with Billboard, he shouted out Snoop Dogg, Nas, Biggie, Slick Rick and Rakim for influencing him.
“It means a lot to me when I’m ranking other artists,” he said. “Mind you, Snoop Dogg, Nas and Biggie [Smalls], those are the artists who had the biggest influence on me. Biggie is my favorite artist of all time. His flows were like breaking the rules. Just the way he lined his shit up to me was crazy — and the storytelling aspects too. Nas, it was technique for me. He had no empty spots. I learned a lot from that first project.
“Snoop was someone I related to because he was skinny, calm, cool, laid back — and that was me. In my mind, coming into the game, he let me know it was cool to be cool. That’s just who I am. You taking a kid from the neighborhood and you putting them into these positions when I’m not naturally vocal like that.”
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He continued: “Slick Rick too is like that for me. I used to come home and watch that ‘Children’s Story.’ That was the illest shit to me. Rakim. It was a balance, and that’s what I hope to do for people watching. You ain’t gotta do all the extra shit. Don’t get me wrong, I love the animated shit. But they animated in real life. You either fuck with it or you don’t.”
Lloyd Banks released his new album The Course of the Inevitable 2 in July with features from Conway the Machine, Benny the Butcher, Jadakiss, Tony Yayo, Vado and Dave East.
I wholeheartedly agree with that list
Respect his list, Kane should’ve made it too…..but no doubt, Big L was/is the punchline king!
ACTUALLY A SOLID LIST. YOU CAN’T MAKE A PUNCHLINE LIST WITHOUT FINESSE, BIG L, AND JADA.
Juelz Santana
Fabolous
Cassidy
Jadakiss
Lloyd Banks
Those were my top five punchline rappers while I was in high school (2000-2004).
don’t understand how anyone can leave Grand Puba off this list.
I THINK BC PUBA WAS MORE THAN A PUNCHLINE RAPPER. THE SAME CAN BE SAID FOR REDMAN AND BIGGIE WHO HAD SOME REALLY GOOD PUNCHLINES BUT WERE ALSO MORE THAN PUNCHLINES.
I feel like Cassidy’s talent gets overlooked because he gets labelled as a battle rapper. If you listen to his B.A.R.S. album, he brought that technical, multi syllable wordplay style with punchlines that is common with battle rappers but was able to to it on tracks with more emotional depth. One of the most underrated rappers. A true lyricists. Eminem is another great lyricist who also makes great music. There’s a lot of big Em fans that don’t even understand how advanced he is when it comes to that same technical side of rap.
eminem actually isn’t very technical. he crams multis to make them fit and he mispronounces words to make them rhyme. a technical rapper matches their syllable count and rhymes words together without changing them. an example of this is : Eminem will pronounce marble floor, ‘mahble flow’ to make it rhyme with bablo boat. lol it sounds good so he doesn’t get called out on it but its actually horrible lol. I agree about Cassidy though, his syllable counting is damn near perfect and he rhymes his words how he actually says them.
early canibus was a punchline god. “rip your skin off just to get on your nerves” can’t leave him off a top 5 list of punchline rappers
K-Reno”.”
Don’t confuse punchliner with lyricist fuckers! It’s two different things you dumb fucks.