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...