Rap Kumite 1
In the final Rap Kumite, an extraterrestrial from ATL takes on Brooklyn’s finest for the number 1 spot.
I took my 20 favorite rappers and put them in head-to-head matchups to battle for their rank in Rap Kumite.
The 10-week publishing schedule that I committed myself to for this Rap Kumite series has been exhausting. I love music, and I love rap music, so it shouldn’t have been a chore to plow through a few hundred songs between July and September. That part is true; it wasn’t hard. It’s the opposite. That shit was fun. Putting the articles together, building the playlists, pouring over each competitor’s catalog — I loved doing all that. The hard part was choosing which two artists to matchup against each other, and, of course, deciding which of the two I liked more. Some of those Rap Kumite battles, like Evidence versus Slug and Pusha-T versus Freddie Gibbs, were hard to call. DMX versus E-40 was tough, and 2Pac versus Nipsey Hussle, that one surprised me because I grew up listening to 2Pac, but as powerful as I found his message, Nipsey’s lyrics carried more weight. Before Rap Kumite 4, the Ghostface Killah/Raekwon battle, I thought I would walk away with GFK as the champ, but Rae got him in the end with a split decision.
The inspiration for “Rap Kumite” hit me earlier this year, back in January, around my 40th birthday. I was reminiscing about a lot of stuff, and while I went over memories that stretched back over my past few decades, I time-stamped that memory with the music I was listening to at that time. I couldn’t look back on my teenage years and not hear Wu-Tang playing the soundtrack to a skateboarding session. Then, I got the idea to sort out my favorite rappers into a top 10 list, but I wanted to more creative way to write about it than to do a list or to write an entire article about the rapper. I’d seen a couple of Verzuz TV battles on Instagram, and I liked the format, so I took my 20 favorite rappers and matched them up to battle it out for a spot in my top 10 list. Getting to 20 rappers, and being absolutely sure that’s who I was rolling with, took me a month. I had to be sure that I liked these 20 artists more than anyone else, and as I paired them up for kumite, I had to make sure that I liked the two rappers in the following rounds more than any of the rappers that came before them. I listened to a lot of rap music the last few months.
As the matchups for my top 3 Rap Kumite battles became clear, I knew I was in for some shit. I liked the Shakespearean element of having rapping partners square off, so it was natural that Method Man and Redman would pair up, and I knew I wanted to put Jay-Z up against Nas, but what about The Notorious B.I.G. and André 3000? They were the only two rappers left that hadn’t hit the kumite mat, but they had such different styles. What would it sound like to have a rapper from another planet step to the undisputed champion of terrestrial rap music? When you move between the spiritual vibe of the dirty south and the tough-as-nails spirit of the Big Apple, there are no smooth transitions between tracks. It’s just hardcore raps about selling drugs, fucking women, and committing violent acts against all enemies, fading into the existential lyrics about all phases of life and other-worldly funk oozing out of the dungeon. This is it, the last Rap Kumite of my series, and it’s for the number one spot on my “All-time Favorites” list. I’m breaking a couple of my own rules for the final duel, including allowing for a track where one of the artists is featured (André 3000 on T.I.’s “Sorry”) and a track that is from a crew collaboration (“Get Money”).
Let the final battle begin.
André 3000
“And this that shit that’ll make you call your baby mama/ When you gone on half a pill, don’t know why but that’s how it is/ Then you take a flight back to the crib, y’all make love like college kids/ And you say all the shit you gon’ do better, we can try this shit again.”
Right around the time I started 8th grade, I picked up this weird CD from Sam Goody (for all you Millennials). It was by this rap duo named OutKast. The CD was called ATLiens, and the cover art looked like a comic book. I’d seen a music video for the album’s lead single, “Elevators”, and I was intrigued. Plus, I had a few disposable dollars saved up from chores, so why not take a chance on OutKast? Gotta love it when something like that pays off. ATLiens remains one of my favorite albums. It stays on rotation, whether I’m running a few tracks on a playlist or letting the album stream from beginning to end. One of the things I love about it, and really about how OutKast make an album, is that they had a theme, and they stuck to it. Every album they’ve made feels like it’s own experience. They are sonically distinguishable from each other and from hip-hop in general. OutKast have always been pioneers in rap.
André 3000 and Big Boy do take turns driving tracks — their back and forth is the best in hip-hop history — but it’s always felt like André has been the creative leader and soul of the duo. You never know what you’re going to get with him. He can take a mundane topic, something played out on record, like a failed relationship, and he can elevate the content with intricate lyrics that expose hidden gems tucked away. His rhymes have layers to them that can only been unfolded once you’ve left behind your perception of the way things should be and should be said in rap music. He’s been the gangster, the player, the poet, the prophet, the rebel, the artist, the lover, and the killer. This motherfucker had his biggest hit a decade after OutKast first dropped, and it wasn’t even a rap song. I don’t even know how you classify “Hey Ya!”. I guess it’s pop. It still is one of the catchiest songs I’ve ever heard even though it’s not my cup of tea. Hell, I missed the boat on The Love Below, giving Dré his props for branching out beyond the Dungeon Family and staying true to himself. Just so happens that was the version of the artist most of the world came to know, but the real André 3000 will always exist in the cosmos as an ATLien.
Favorite Track
“Sorry (feat. Stacy Barthe & André 3000)”
“Wheelz Of Steel” is my favorite OutKast song, and I love Dré’s verse on it, but the shit he raps about on this T.I. track hit me in so many different ways the first time I’d heard it. This verse fucked me up. I know I’m breaking my own kumite rule by allowing a feature verse, but here is André 3-stacks, well past the Grammy’s and The Love Below, into acting, people wondering whether he’s going to keep rapping or even if he still can, and by golly, he drops this shit on us.
He’s had several ill features with the likes of Drake, Frank Ocean, Beyoncé, UGK, Jeezy, and Anderson .Paak, and he’s given us nothing but Atlanta, Georgia heat for years, but his verse on “Sorry” is his best.
The Notorious B.I.G.
“It was all a dream, I used to read ‘Word up!’ magazine/ Salt-n-Peppa and Heavy D up in the limousine/ Hanging pictures on my wall/ Every Saturday ‘Rap Attack’, Mr. Magic, Marley Marl/ I let my tape rock ’til my tape popped/ Smokin’ weed in Bambú, sippin’ on Private Stock.”
I wrote an article on the 25th anniversary of Biggie’s death earlier this year to celebrate the artist and to reconcile that’s it’s been so long. In that article I said that Biggie’s “skills are undeniable. There’s no debate that he could switch up his style and rap on any beat. He could spit a freestyle battle rap or deliver a 32-bar narrative, with a cast of characters involved in the action. His albums were a master class of beats and rhymes, and his impact on the game and the culture is still felt today, a quarter century after he was killed.” Biggie was the shit, and in that same article I made the case that if the debate about who is the greatest rapper ever is between Jay-Z and Biggie, I would take Biggie. As fate would so cruelly have it, Biggie only gave us two LPs, and he only lived to see one get released. Those two albums, Ready to Die and Life After Death, are two of the greatest rap albums ever recorded. So, Biggie is two-for-two with incredible albums. His career is flawless, and I have no doubt that he would’ve continued to make more incredible music had he not been murdered when he was only 25. Imagine a Notorious B.I.G. Unplugged album. What about what Jay-Z said on Pusha-T’s “Neck & Wrist”? If Big had survived, we would’ve had The Commission.
There would’ve been a lot of great music between 1997 and now from Biggie. That is some of what fans mourned when he was killed. We’ll never know what he would have given us, but we have what he did, and it is the stuff of legend.
Favorite Track
Almost all of Biggie’s catalog is filled with bangers. When I starter putting the “Rap Kumite 1” playlist together, I had damn near all of Life After Death on it. It’s been hard to choose one track for all of the artists in the top 3, and it didn’t get easier with Biggie.
“Juicy” stands alone among all of his great tracks. If there was one song that you had to select to represent hip-hop in a museum of human history, this would be the one. The rhymes are air tight, and the message is one of hip-hop’s purest driving forces: we fucking made it.
There can only be ONE!
This is Rap Kumite 1, reserved for the top spot in my “Top 10”. Numero fucking uno. Styles matter in fighting and in hip-hop, and Biggie Smalls had the illest of any MC on this planet, in my humble opinion. He could do it all, rap about any topic in any way. He would venture into the darkest alleys and basements and commit horrible acts of violence towards his competition, and he would also uplift your spirit with words of hope and praise. He was the shit, and he was taken from us too soon. We’ll always love Big Poppa.
But, today, Biggie wasn’t up against an MC from this planet. He was up against extraterrestrial life with extra-sensory perceptions and supernatural rapping abilities.
André 3000
Congratulations! The prize is the most special place in my heart.
Dré is the dopest rapper ever. He found a way to be himself, which was diametrically opposed to conventional rap standards, and he still earned respect from any worthy MC, and other artists in the industry. He’s always been comfortable in his skin, like if he wanted to walk around Venice Beach playing the flute like someone who lives on the streets of Venice Beach, he’ll just get out there and do it and have the time of his life. He’s weird, strange, kind of goofy, but no one questions his ability to paint a picture with his words.
RAP KUMITE
10. Evidence
09. GZA
08. Pusha-T
07. DMX
06. Nipsey Hussle
05. Kendrick Lamar
04. Raekwon
03. Method Man
02. Jay-Z
01. André 3000
That’s all folks. Rap Kumite has drawn to a close. These are my top 10 favorite rappers of all-time. No doubt it looks different from your own, as it should in this highly subjective topic. You should put together your own kumite and see who stands up to whom. In an alternate world, my top 10 would have been:
ALTERNATE WORLD RAP KUMITE
10. Slug
09. Aesop Rock
08. Freddie Gibbs
07. E-40
06. 2Pac
05. Eminem
04. Ghostface Killah
03. Redman
02. Nas
01. The Notorious B.I.G.
Not a bad list either.
