As you may know, The Source released a not-so-cohesive list of the “50 Most Lyrical Rappers of all time” which was rather poorly done. As promulgated RapGeniuses, I’m confident we can make a much better list. Do this for the Lupes, The Lowkeys, The Kendricks, The Immortal Techniques, and the Gambinos of the game. Post your artist, give your reasoning, and vote away. Cause sometimes the people must yell to be heard. Go crazy.

Anyone BUT:

Immortal Technique, Canibus, all other “lurrical miracle” rappers that string together words that can be found in any high school vocabulary book and pass it off as being a lyrical Mohammed.

Eminem. You all should know why already.

I don’t even need to think about this, Kendrick Lamar. Lyrical in his own regard, an acquired taste some would say. But Kendrick’s lyrics really make you think and you can relate, his lines are so damn pivotal, if he isn’t on your list you must be deaf.

Lupe Fiasco — GOAT

#1 Canibus

DONE

Pusha T, he’s done beautiful this year on singles, and released a decent EP late 2011.

Kanye West. He has so many styles. You cannot name on Kanye Album thats hasn’t gone platinum or considered album of the year. He constantly is able to reinvent himself and half the time he’s rapping over the average listeners head they over look him

Nas for someone who has his longevity and remain relevant, not to mention he is a wordsmith.

I would tend to disagree with eliminating people from the list due to the level of vocabulary as long as lines are still executed well and contain solid rhyme schemes and meanings.

The ones that really annoy me are groups like Das Racist, which through out complex rhymes, but structurally don’t make any damn sense a lot of the time.

1 Kendrick Lamar

Nas — Illmatic. Enough said.

Andre 3000 — Never had a bad verse.

Lupe — Failure. Most lyrically complex song ever.

Missing artists that just jump out at me:

Elzhi
Los
Jay Electronica
One Be Lo
Del

LOL at 50 cent, Luda, Fab, TI, Rick Ross, Lil Wayne, Kanye, Lil Kim, Busta, Snoop, Queen Latifah, and Jay-Z being on a top lyricist list though. There’s more to call out, but those are just too laughable to bear.

LOL@dadboner http://rapgenius.com/Immortal-technique-rich-mans-world-1-lyrics

you can’t deny his flow on this one son, or lyrics

personally, my list would go something like…

Canibus
Bus
Bis
Rip The Jacker
Can-I-Bus
Captain Cold Crush
Germaine Williams
Caesar Germanicus
Canibus Sateevuh
Stanibus
Poet Laureate
Prof. Emeritus Rip The Jacker"

Das Racist (Heems and Kool A.D.), Vast Aire, El-P, Despot, Big Baby Gandhi, Mos Def, Earl Sweatshirt, MF Doom, GZA, RZA, Raekwon, Vordul Mega, Old Nas, Q-Tip, Phife Dawg, Talib Kweli, Tab-One, Elzhi, Danny Brown, Mr. Muthafuckin' Exquire

I don’t see why Kanye is at all a laughable candidate; MBDTF alone was chock-full of solid lyricism.

1 has to be Lupe Fiasco line for line nobody is touching him. When it comes to the storytelling he displayed through his saga “The Cool” or the lyricism and wordplay on his mixtapes to the entendres and double meanings of his songs.

“A little big (Notorious BIG) in the waist, 2-pocket (Tupac) on the back, call them luvi’s old jeans/OG’s covered in blue die/dye”

“Lu don’t moo/move no cow words/ cowards you only heard/herd lions/lines”

“I stack my Paper and throw off my scents/cents/sense this is top flow/floor better look out below. Pennies from Heaven is the same as a Semi from the 2nd and I rain/reign supreme. Turn your umbrellas upside down, did you even catch the change in theme?”

And no MF DOOM tbh, rapping as a 9 headed alien dragon godzilla isn’t lyrical in the slightest bit. It’s just plain weird & DOOM’s pseudo-intellectual lyrics are turrible.

Feel me doe?

Slick Rick, possibly one of the greatest storytellers in rap to date, whether serious tales: children’s story or more comical: la di da di. Eloquent to say the least.

Dead Prez as a collective simply because they are dead prez

Fashawn, his name is never brought up and he’s real dope his first album was great but it seems people have forgotten about him since then

@2StackzNoChainz

are you a new user?

Why isn’t Blu on the list at all?

Bunch of noobs here…

Not seeing Doom there makes me wanna cry, also surprised at seeing Method Man over Raekwon.

But Rick Ross? Come on..

And as much as I love Kanye, I don’t think top 50

MF Doom, king geedorah, viktor Vaughn

Lol Canned.. no MBDTF wasn’t full of great lyricism and Kanye is a more than laughable candidate.

If you’re talking Top 50, then yeah, Nas, Jay-Z Lil' Wayne and Kanye would wind up somewhere on that list. But honestly lyricism has stepped up so much in the last 5-7 years that most of the top lyricists ever are newer cats. Rap has always been and always will be about creatively describing one’s lifestyle or one’s claimed lifestyle, but in a lot of ways it has gone away from that and more towards an exercise in language, which often comes off to me as more lyrical. Two pioneers of this new approach would definitely be Eminem and MF DOOM, so those two would have to be high up there. People who kind of spawned from that school of thought and did their own thing with it would include Lupe, Heems of Das Racist, Danny Brown, and Earl Sweatshirt. You would have to put a lot of Wu Tang members on there, as well as other East Coast boom-bap lyricists like Cassidy and Papoose. I don’t really like Canibus or Immortal Technique because they lack flow or really any sense of the music, but I would not mind their appearance on the list based purely on lyrics; however, you would then have to include other vocab rappers like Chino XL. Also, Pharoahe Monch gets my vote.

where the fuck is Blu?

Oh fuck and of course Andre, he’s just so smoothly witty.

Jedi Mind Tricks.

The Source’s list was “of all time”. It wasn’t even a bad list. I still disagree, but that doesn’t there were terrible choices. Anyways my favorite lyricists that I listen to on the regular, old or new are…

Big Pun(every day), Eminem, Anyone from Slaughterhouse, Cormega, Nas, AZ, Jay-Z, Canibus(before J.Cole and Dizaster),Earl Sweatshirt(my favorite in the moment), Skyzoo, Big K.R.I.T., Action Bronson, Kendrick Lamar, Kembe X… Talib, Common, Mos… Vinnie Paz, Ill Bill… Too many to name, b.

It seems to me that in this site the majority of the fans favor the new cats of the past 5-10 years, which is cool, but you can’t forget that if we’re talkin' “of all time”, it’ll be very hard for the new cats to compete wit' the old for a top spot, especially when the list just keeps piling up into the hundreds of dope lyricists. But it’s cool that we’re talkin' about others that didn’t make The Source’s list.

And to the man that said Immortal Technique and Canibus are dictionary rappers is clearly buggin'. Just because they spit at a high vocabulary doesn’t mean they ain’t got no flows. You really gonna choose 2Chainz(you did say ANYBODY) over these dudes? Comparing LYRICS? Sit down, bra.

Complex rhyme schemes =/= lyricism

Toally agree^

BIG L, or Notorious B.I.G, come on this is an easy one

Seems like they didn’t add a lot of newer artists on purpose. They went with more mainstream rappers who made a name for themselves and had longer longevity.
Though Im surprised they snubbed Big Boi off the list, if Andre 3k is on it, he should be there too. Agree with Technique, Tech N9ne, Lowkey. Styles P should also be ranked way higher (if Jada’s in the top 20, Styles shouldn’t be too far behind)

Shaneee, I think all the arguments in this thread are operating on too vague of a definition of “lyricism.” To some it is more about rhymes schemes while to others it is story telling or the explicit thoughts behind individual lines. You’re right I think I definitely overstated it when I said chock-full, but I don’t think he is all that laughable compared to some of the artists in this discussion. For example, a song like Jesus Walks isn’t the most complicated when it comes to the rhymes, but the content of the song was definitely progressing the rap game.

And in my eyes, Eminem should top this chart for his pure lyrical dominance of all other rappers when he came out with his first couple EPs. There may be more technical rappers today in certain ways, but in comparison to their peers they don’t stand out nearly as much.

The word lyricist is too ambiguous. Over the last 20 years hip-hop has seen different era’s and the way people come across as ‘lyrical’ has changed.

The 90’s lyricists were the more street/ghetto tales that had us feeling like we grew up in NY (e.g. Nas, Biggie, Jay, Wu-Tang). These guys painted visuals with their rhymes and had a strong sense of character their persona’s which made you feel their lyrics more strongly.

My preference goes towards these emcees (B.I.G., Nas, Jay, Eminem, Raekwon).
There are so many lyrical rappers whose content differs hugely from the 90’s style rapper but are just as talented. Kendrick Lamar, J.Cole, Blu, K.R.I.T. are examples of the new generation of ‘lyricists’ that are also great artists.

A modern example of raw pound for pound lyricism would be Slaughterhouse. All 4 of those rappers a lyrical geniuses and definitely deserve a place on the list.

Wu Tang will be recognized as a unit, seeing as they were a movement in their own right. as will most other rap groups, excluding OutKast, because Big Boi and 3 Stacks were on different levels.

Canibus is automatically top ten, don’t even fuck around.The man can fit at-least 2 stories into every-song, even though he doesn’t always have a point to make.

Eminem… Top notch vocabulary, complex flows, paints a hell of a picture. He’s definitely top 3 of all time.

Groovy dude, not to prove to be rude. But this stuff is like what you might put on movie food. Uh, what is jalapenas

That’s clever, admit king Geheadora is more than just a 40 foot tall robotic space alien.

MF DOOM, Kendrick Lamar, Kanye West, Lupe Fiasco, Nas, Pharaohe Monch, Andre 3000, Ghostface Killah, Jay Electronica, Canibus, Big K.R.I.T., Big Boi, Jay-Z, Earl Sweatshirt, Das Racist, El-P.

RAKIM

Tech N9ne. Lyricism off the scale in songs like “He’s A Mental Giant” “In My Head” “Red Nose” and “Can’t Shake It”

K-Rino

He should be on this list.

Andre 3000
Ab-Soul
Logic
Childish Gambino
DOOM

Most of the people I was gonna list have been said except for Posdnuos from De La Soul.

Lil Wayne
Jay Z
Kanye West
2Chainz
Rick Ross
Tyga
Pusha T
Gucci Mane
Nicki Minaj
Big Sean
Drake
DJ Khaled
Birdman
Young Jeezy
Eminem
Wiz Khalifa
J. Cole

Ja Rule, Jadakiss, Styles P. they made some of the hardest diss songs in history (Loose Change, Shots fired, etc) & they all had beef with that bitch 50 cent so i have huge respect for them