No. 23: LL Cool J

There are a couple of places in this countdown where it breaks into tiers — kind of like Bill Simmons' Hall of Fame Pyramid in basketball, only with fewer dudes and sometimes clearer divides.

The 24-50 spots represent one tier. It's easy to argue that O.C., for example, is just as good as Fat Joe, who is just as good as Raekwon, who is just as good as Grand Puba. You could slide any of those guys up or down a few spots and I wouldn't be mad at you.

None of the guys from 23 up could legitimately be ranked below anyone from 24 down.

With that explanation out of the way, James Todd Smith is undoubtedly a next-tier emcee. He's an unquestioned legend. But LL Cool J is 22 spots lower than he thinks he should be for a couple of reasons...

a) He hasn't made any good music for a long, long time. Granted, there are plenty of rappers on this list that we can say that about, but many of them weren't trying to, either. LL was trying, and he hasn't made a good album since Mama Said Knock You Out dropped almost 21 years ago. With the exception of a few cuts on 1995's Mr. Smith, he hasn't even made a good song since then. That's a lot of wackness that can't be explained away.

b) Canibus FUCKED him UP.

Given b), it's a testament to LL's earlier body of work that he's even this high. Nobody else that took such a high-profile ass-whooping is ranked (spoiler!) above the person who administered it. But it's impossible to front on the early portion of LL's career, when he came with a mix of hard and smooth that almost no other rapper could pull off.

The ladies still love me, even if you don't.

Still a teenager when Radio dropped in 1985, LL Cool J burst onto the scene with more authority than perhaps anyone before him, including the standard-bearers of the time, Kurtis Blow and Run-DMC. Songs like "Rock The Bells" remain listenable 25 years later, something that can't be said for much else that was recorded in the pre-Rakim era.

LL kept it rolling for the rest of the decade, keeping the ladies wet with songs like "I Need Love" and "I'm That Type Of Guy." Just when you thought he got too soft, though, along came "Mama Said Knock You Out," the title cut from arguably his best album overall. Mama Said delivered the perfect mixture of rough and smooth — from "Around The Way Girl" to "The Boomin' System" and right back to "Six Minutes Of Pleasure," the LP was LL at his absolute peak.

Then, he inexplicably fell off a cliff with his next album, 14 Shots To The Dome...and after he briefly recaptured the magic at times on Mr. Smith, it was over. LL tried to remain credible by starting a beef with Canibus on "4,3,2,1" in 1998 but wound up looking foolish when the younger, more talented rapper crushed him with "Second Round KO."

By 2000, it almost seemed comical that LL would put out an album titled G.O.A.T., because it was clear that he was never going to be within sniffing distance of such a crown again. Today's fans know him as that guy from NCIS: Los Angeles, and maybe as the guy who did that embarrassingly bad song "Head Sprung" back in 2004

Basically, he's become the poor man's Will Smith.

Luckily for LL, some of us still remember a time when that wasn't the case.