S. Samuel
With our first quarter Top 5 Dead or Alive match-ups in the books, we are pitting the first 10 weekly winners against one another to see whose list truly reigns supreme. In Round 1, there will be five total match-ups based one winning percentages. The match-up with the highest Round 1 winning percentage will be automatically placed in the Finals. Let’s get ready to rumble!
In today’s final first-week match-up, Philadelphia’s Has-Lo‘s picks hit the New Jersey Turnpike to take on Newark-bred producer Jerry Wonda. Can Lo make Jerry a Has-Been or will the hitmaker prove to be bigger than a one-hit Wonda? Who makes it to next week’s Round 2 match-up? You decide!
| JERRY WONDA’S PICKS | | | HAS-LO’S PICKS |
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Redman. My man is from Jersey and I grew up in New Jersey. Real talk, every time I see him he’s spitting the right things in his music. All of that really gets to me. He’s been rapping like that for years. |
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Wu-Tang Clan. You can’t just pick one because when you do, then you’ll think of another reason to pick someone else in there. So you have Raekwon, Ghostface, Masta Killa, Inspectah Deck and Method Man. I love all of them. |
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You didn’t name Busta Rhymes in the Hall of Fame. Oh my God. Busta to me, he can never go away. He just keeps coming back. He can’t stop coming back. This guy spits so much. Nobody can take him down. In a face-to-face, nobody can take him down. |
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Cormega straight out of Queensbridge, [for] his consistency and rawness. He’s the blueprint of what you loved about Queens hip-hop but he’s one of the only ones that’s still consistency giving you what you want in that capacity. He’s another unstated artist. He’s really lyrical but does not get noticed for how lyrical he really is. |
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Let me see. I want to name my man Ol’ Dirty Bastard. That’s my cat right there. We already know what it is with him. Dirty was always real. He would just speak. I love when people don’t do too much thinking and just let it out. That’s what he was. Whatever he said, he lived by. |
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MC Lyte. She was one of the first people I heard when I was getting into hip-hop. She was one of the people to inspire me to write my first rhyme. I was in love with her when I was younger, with everything that she did. From the height of her career to all of her albums. |
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Prodigy from Mobb Deep. Just listen to his tone. What he’s saying was already heavy but listen to his tone on the records. Even right now, I’m just listening to Prodigy in my iPod. I can only have certain music in there because I have thousands and thousands of songs but I have Prodigy in there too. Prodigy is my man and I’m glad he’s out of jail too. |
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EPMD. These guys were like the second hip-hop tapes I got when I was younger. When Strictly Business came out, EPMD just blew me away. I don’t know what it was about them but they just blew me away with their music. I loved the flow, beats, chemistry and rhymes. I don’t even have any real kind of scientific reason behind it. I just love EPMD. |
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Das EFX. I love Das EFX because Das EFX was the real truth. Whatever you were saying, they got your attention. Even when we were on the road as the Fugees, I would watch them every night. They would get into the crowd and really stick with them. |
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Mos Def. Mos was someone that was dropping a lot of jewels. He was one of the first people that sort of gave it to me that and [made it] digestible. It wasn’t from a high place, he was the guy that was standing next to you. [He’s] someone you could picture yourself having a relationship with and being friends with. Someone you could really speak to. It really influenced the way I rap today by being able to say something without being on a soapbox and to be able to be witty, funny and knowledgable all at the same time. |
