S. Samuel
[Each week, SOHH asks two entertainment personalities to name their Top 5 rappers of all-time. To make things tricky, we've created a "Hall of Fame" of emcees (see right) who are universally respected and therefore may not be mentioned. After Torae unloaded his fave five earlier this week, Harlem's Ca$hflow reveals his top choices.]
Jadakiss. Jada is the king of street lyrics. He’s always had that grittiness and those hard punchlines. He’s been doing this for a while. If he’s doing a feature with you, as an artist, you know you’re going to step your rhymes up times 30. So you’ve gotta put Jada on there. That’s my first name on the list.
T.I. I know it may be a little controversial but I’ve gotta go with T.I. First of all, he’s called “King of the South” for a reason. ATL, they led a large movement in hip-hop which I feel was led by T.I. His microphone presence is there too. He can give you a record like “Whatever You Like” and then still say, “You Don’t Know Me.” He’s a very dope artist.
Fabolous. He’s been in the game for a while now. Longevity, punchlines, and he’s able to be looked at as a ladies rapper and then he’s one of the highest downloaded mixtapes guys. His mixtape downloads are very high. He has slick punchlines and it’s very hard to be able to do all those things.
Kanye West. Yeezy came in as Jay-Z’s producer to doing collaboration albums with him. People are even saying, “He had a better verse than Hov.” Come on, you can’t do it better than that.
Lil Wayne. I think he took the mixtape scene to a whole ‘nother level. His delivery? Come on, I feel like he’s a game-changer. He made a lot of people follow what he was doing. His group records, he took the mixtapes to new heights as we’ve seen with his Dedication series.
