You’re top 50 rapper list is wrong
This Summer a mysterious top 50 list of rappers appeared on social media. It was a bad list. No women made the list. No UK rappers. I believe the only Canadian on the list was Drake. There was no criteria, just a poorly thought of list. The list went viral and then suddenly more poorly thought of top 50 rapper lists appeared.
A top 50 Toronto rapper list which only had male rappers from the past 3 years of Toronto hip hop. The ‘definitive’ top 50 list was posted by a radio personality. At least Mike Tyson had Queen Latifah on his list. The thing is, any top 50 list of rappers is going to be bad. The last thing anyone should be doing is trying to narrow a genre of music to it’s top 50 artists. Unfortunately, history will do that. I only admire one, maybe two pieces written from Mozart, but he’s championed more than many of the composers of his day whose work I’m a fan of.
There are factors behind that. Historians have societal narratives they want to maintain. It’s only been fairly recent that black classical composers and musicians have been acknowledged. A primary income of Romani culture during that period was music, yet we’re never taught about their composers and musicians. You could say the same for Jewish artists. We’re supposed to all believe that all the royal and bourgeoisie courts were entertained by white, male artists, despite that being the furthest thing from the truth.
The thing is, we know better than that now. Also, most of hip hop’s beginnings were well documented through photography, and documentaries. From early in it’s growth, emcees from the UK (Slick Rick), Canada (Maestro), and Hispanic communities were part of the foundation of rap. There has always been female rappers. So why do all the lists feature only black male rappers from the US?
Should the lists feature primarily black, male, American rappers? Sure, but to not acknowledge the other peoples that built rap in any list would be silly. That said, I think all these lists are silly. Even if the lists were properly balanced.
Why? Because as a man in his early 40’s, who doesn’t follow rap the way I did when I was DJing, I still find at least 1 new artist a month that gets me excited about the genre.
This past month I discovered YBN Cordae and J-Soul (Is J-Soul considered a rapper?). The month before I discovered Dave and Sampa the Great. The idea of selecting a top 50 rapper just seems dumb. My top 50 is ever evolving — something I never thought I’d say when mumble rap became a thing.
Choosing criteria for a list is almost impossible. Of course, all art stands on the shoulders of those who came before. However, how much influence has Eminem’s music had on rap in general? His songs are the most purchased rap tunes ever, but there isn’t a huge pool of comedy-satire-emo rappers dominating the mainstream scene. If being popular, doesn’t directly impact an artist’s influence on a genre, what does? Skill?
Arguably, the best technically skilled rapper today is Rapsody. Would I put her on any top 50 list? Have I seen her on any top 50 rappers lists? No. Why? because all of these lists are arbitrary. They don’t matter. There have been studies on the rappers with the biggest vocabularies, but that alone means nothing.
This isn’t the NBA. A small pool of people have played in the NBA. They can measure talent through standard and advanced analytics. There are only two skills to measure a basketball player:
1/A player’s ability to score, or assist in scoring a bucket
AND
2/A player’s ability to hinder, or assist in limiting the opposing teams ability to score.
Meanwhile, rap can be split into mainstream, underground, and battle rap. You can judge rappers based on earnings, lyricism, vocabulary, sense of rhythm, story-telling, swagger and consistency. Can you imagine the Venn diagram needed to narrow a global list down using any, or all of that criteria? It would be a mess. I guess it’s all fun and games, but these lists have zero relevancy to the music created.
