No. 45: Kurupt

Kurupt somehow feels both over- and under-appreciated to me. I'm not sure why.

Ricardo Brown first came to our attention as a barely 20-year-old prodigy on The Chronic. While Snoop Doggy Dogg was clearly the headlining act in Dre's ensemble cast, Kurupt more than held his own during his appearances on the classic album and did the same in guest spots on Doggystyle and the Above The Rim soundtrack, where we were formally introduced to Tha Dogg Pound (Kurupt and Daz). Despite being born in Philly, Kurupt essentially adopted Cali as his home (much like New York and Baltimore native 2Pac would do after signing with Death Row).

Eat a bowl of shit, bitch.

His rhymes during that period ran the full gamut from super-simplistic misogyny ("Ain't No Fun") to fairly complex ("Smooth"), but Kurupt has usually managed to deliver quotables either way, earning a reputation as one of the best lyricists on the West Coast (which never cared much about lyrics during the G-Funk '90s, but that's beside the point).

After joining the mass exodus from Death Row in the late 1990s, Kurupt finally made his solo debut with the double LP Kuruption! in 1998 and followed with Tha Streetz Iz A Mutha one year later. Both were typically solid efforts that achieved minimal success commercially but provided plenty of entertaining moments, including "Your Girlfriend Is A Hoe."

Since then, Kurupt has kept quietly busy, maintaining on-again, off-again relationships with both Daz and what's left of the Death Row label while teasing the world with the promise of a full-length release from supergroup HRSMN (short for Four Horsemen) — Kurupt, Canibus, Killah Priest and Ras Kass.

Whether or not that quartet ever gets that act together, Kurupt's place in hip-hop history is secure.

No. 46: Kool Keith

Like B-Real, Kool Keith will never be confused with the great lyricists in hip-hop history. Rhyme schemes are not his thing. He also never achieved the commercial success that came to some of the emcees on this list — but that doesn't lessen his impact on the game.

Keith Thornton first made a splash with the Ultramagnetic MCs, who debuted with the classic LP Critical Beatdown. Their less heralded follow-up, Funk Your Head Up, has always been one of my personal favorites, with Keith shining solo on "Poppa Large" and delivering a solid leadoff on the slept-on gem "Porno Star."

Yup...par for the course.

Following one more Ultramagnetics LP (The Four Horsemen), Kool Keith started to make waves primarily as a solo artist, drawing attention for his off-the-wall style. Rhyming on beat wasn't always a requirement...then again, rhyming wasn't, either. But it all seemed to work.

On his second solo effort, Sex Style, Keith opens up in his usual freaky way:

Sex Style!/N****s want it free/They dogs drink my piss (Girls pay a fee) 
You want freestyle/that's right, the style is free
N****s suck my dick and their girls drink my pee

The album also featured the closest thing to a radio-friendly Kool Keith single, "Plastic World" — although that's a relative term, since nothing Kool Keith put out can truly be called "radio-friendly." He's always marched to the beat of his own drum, and fuck you if you couldn't hear it. Not everyone dug him, but you had to respect him. At least one emcee ranked ahead of him based his style almost entirely on Keith's, so it's clear that the respect is there, no matter how nonsensical most of the content.
 

No. 47: B-Real

If you don't recognize the voice of Louis "B-Real" Freese by the end of the first syllable, there's something wrong with your ears — or there's something wrong with you.

As the dominant voice in Cypress Hill, B-Real made an immediate splash in 1991 with the group's lead single, "How I Could Just Kill A Man." His trademark nasal vocals set him apart, but his flow and rhymes proved from the jump that he was more than just another gimmick rapper in an era full of them. After establishing street cred with their self-titled debut, Cypress Hill delivered a massive crossover smash with its sophomore LP, Black Sunday. THC-fueled jams like "Insane In The Brain" and "Hits From The Bong" were huge hits with the college crowd, even those who hadn't given hip hop much of a chance before.

Yeah, that pretty much sums it up.

The group saw its commercial success slow considerably from there despite a third album (Temples Of Boom) that might have been its best all-around effort, and with the exception of the 2000 hit single "Rap/Rock Superstar," Cypress Hill has toiled quietly in the shadows since, releasing six more albums together.

B-Real, meanwhile, has kept busy on the side by making guest appearances with...well, just about everybody. He rocked with RBX, KRS-One and Nas on Dr. Dre's lead Aftermath single, "East Coast West Coast Killas," in 1996 and has also blessed tracks for the likes of Outkast, De La Soul, Proof and Dilated Peoples.

Plenty of emcees have had unique voices or deliveries, but few of them used those vocal gifts to their full advantage like B-Real did. Though not necessarily worthy of inclusion based on lyrical content alone — at least 86.7 percent of his rhymes were about smoking weed or shooting people — he still merits a spot in the countdown because he managed to make major contributions during the Golden Age. Hip hop wouldn't be the same without him.

No. 48: O.C.

Over the course of this countdown, there will be a few slept-on emcees sprinkled in that will make most casual rap fans wonder what the hell I'm thinking. O.C. is certainly one of those. You might not have even heard of him. Hell, I'm guilty of not being quite as familiar with his stuff as I should be. But that doesn't detract from his dopeness one bit.

Treatin' emcees like government cheese.

Omar Credle made his presence known from day one on the mic, stealing the show from Organized Konfusion with a strong cleanup verse on the 1991 banger  "Fudge Pudge." He followed with a few other notable guest appearances before releasing his debut LP, Word...Life, in 1994. That critically acclaimed joint included the single "Time's Up" — younger fans will likely recognize the beat as the one that Eminem blanked out over at the beginning of 8 Mile.

Since then, O.C. has released five more solo albums and more than held his own on several other posse cuts, including "Return Of The Crooklyn Dodgers." He has further solidified his rep on the underground level as part of the D.I.T.C. crew, a hip-hop supergroup that includes a few other top-50 emcees.

He may not rank in the top thousand in terms of mainstream notoriety or record sales, but in terms of pure skill, there aren't too many better than O.C. If anything, I'll probably end up regretting not ranking him higher than this.

No. 49: MC Lyte

Though hip hop has always been a male-dominated genre, there were a number of female rappers in the discussion for this countdown. Among the toughest was Lana Moorer, better known as MC Lyte.

I know it's rude to point. I don't care.

Put on thanks in part to her brothers (the group Audio Two), Lyte was still just 17 years old when her debut LP, Lyte As A Rock, became the first full-length album released by a solo female emcee. She followed with four more solo efforts between 1989 and 1996, all of which peaked in the top 20 on the Billboard R&B chart.

Though she achieved most of her mainstream success in the mid- to late 1990s with singles like "Ruffneck" and "Cold Rock A Party," much of Lyte's best work was delivered early in her career, when songs like "I Cram To Understand U," "Paper Thin" and "Cha Cha Cha" proved that she could go line for line with any of the top male emcees of the era.

Still putting out music on her own today, Lyte set a bar back in the day that few, if any, females have been able to reach in the two decades since.

No. 50: MC Serch

There were a number of emcees I could have stuck into this last spot without it making too much of a difference, but Michael "MC Serch" Berrin — despite the shit stain on his résumé from that white rapper reality show a few years ago — is probably more deserving than anyone in the pool of also-rans.

What Matt Felling would look like with a high-top fade.

Serch was, as the better half of 3rd Bass, probably the last of the respected white emcees before Marshall Mathers blew up — and with good reason. During the "conscious rap" era, he was able to deliver heavy rhymes with the best of them, even on radio joints like "The Gas Face"...

Black cat is bad luck/bad guys wear black
Must've been a white guy who started all that...
...Don't speak of bleach/bend them to right
Say it was night wayyy before the light...

Serch also deserves credit for helping put on a couple of other emcees ranked ahead of him on this list, including Nas (that's only a spoiler if you're stupid)...as well as offering up arguably the greatest quote of the 1990s:

"Yo! White people are wack. We're kind of embarrassed to be white."

You're the second most influential Caucasian emcee of all time, Serch. No embarrassment there.

1 Motherfucking 2 Motherfucking 3...

During a brief September jaunt to Canada with some of my crew from school, we ran through a 64-emcee bracket in an effort to crown the best of all time. Our trip was cut short before we officially crowned a winner — but since Rembert Browne has seized a virtual monopoly on rap brackets by going mainstream on Grantland, it would have been a bit cliche to run with the same format here anyway.

Instead, we're going to insert superfluous strikethrough text go at it the old-fashioned way. Using some of the feedback I got while running through our "tournament," I'm counting down the top 50 emcees of all time.

A few of the ground rules:

Never put me in your box if the shit eats tapes. 

 

a) The list is limited to emcees that have had at least one national release on a "major" label. That eliminates many of the best lyricists from recent years, including battle heavyweights such as Illmaculate (I was tempted to count this Old Spice ad as a "national release," but I just couldn't). I will give the underground heads their due at another time.

2) Selling records <> talent. If sales meant that much, we would just narrow this down to Eminem and Jay-Z right now, and Vanilla Ice would be in the top five. That said, relevance (not the same thing as fame) is a factor. How much did the artist influence the art for the better (or worse)?

d) Making good music certainly helps the cause, but it's not the only thing that matters. Lots of rappers can make good songs while not being very good at rapping. Conversely, there are rappers who have incredible lyrical content but struggle to make listenable records. I'm partial to the latter.

7) When considering the body of work on record, though, consistent quality matters. Did the emcee put out consistently good product, or did a few tracks or albums get mailed in? Failure to live up to potential hurt a few people.

H) You'll notice an incredible imbalance in terms of the era from which most emcees on this list come. That's not so much a product of nostalgia as it is cold, hard reality. "Mainstream" rappers just aren't as good lyrically today — sorry, but it's a fact. Drake wouldn't have had a chance in hell at a record deal 20 years ago, and if you're the kind of person who thinks he belongs on a list of the top 500 rappers ever, much less 50, you're a fucking idiot.

zzz) When in doubt, the deciding factor was "If these two were to battle, who would win?"

I don't expect you to agree with this entire list, but then again, it's not yours. Make your own.

With a little bit of further ado...let's begin...

Throwin' A Haymaker...

...that's been way too long in the making (8 million bonus points if you know whose line I just paraphrased)...

Though my Twitter feed on the right (follow @superhater) will offer random verbal assaults on everything from sports to politics to life in general, this blog will serve (almost) exclusively as a museum of sorts — a tribute to the dying art of hip-hop music and culture.

I was fortunate enough to come of age during the genre's Golden Age — roughly 1988 (the year I entered high school) through 1995 (when I began my senior year in college). I grew up on hip-hop and have carried on a love affair with it for virtually my entire adult life, even going so far as to record three LPs of my own, among other things.

But this isn't about me. (Sorry.) It's about an art form that, like most great art forms before it, has slowly given way to commercialism and bullshit. Today's young heads think that MTV minstrels like Lil' Wayne, Drake and Nicki Minaj could actually hang with the real all-time greats. They haven't got a fucking clue.

Just like BDP, I'm hoping to educate and entertain at the same time. Edutainment. So...let's take it back...