

For those doubting his worthiness of our top spot, he’s asked you nicely before. Before marrying Beyoncé and fathering Blue Ivy to construct the real First Family (no shade, Obama), he was already taking others’ hot lines and making them into hot songs, running streets like drunks might run street lights, accosting others for trying (and presumably failing) their best Jay-Z renditions. 2 … Hard Knock Life, 1999’s Vol 3… Life and Times of S. was 24 when he was murdered in Los Angeles-Jay filled the void created with Christopher Wallace’s death with gold-standard-setting LPs like 1998’s Vol. An old man (26) in rap years by the time his breakthrough instant classic, Reasonable Doubt, came out in 1998-for perspective, the Notorious B.I.G. (“Brooklyn’s Finest”) to Coldplay (“Beach Chair”) to UGK (the masterpiece “Big Pimpin’”) and bookended basically the entire career of modern day GOAT candidate Kanye West, while still flashing brilliance in the ’10s ( Watch the Throne). While he’s traded the desire to make classic albums for more top-down tycooning in recent years, never forget this-no rapper has better endured the day-in, day-out shift of the modern rap era than Bed-Stuy’s Jay-Z. Not many rappers can list collaborators as varied as the Notorious B.I.G. was nominated as NYC's Greatest hip-hop artist by Noah Callahan-Bever What other heights would Brooklyn’s finest have reached? We’ll never know. could pull out of his back pocket (“Hypnotize,” “Juicy”) with the hard-hitting street knock (“Gimme the Loot,” “Machine Gun Funk”) that sated the “real hip-hop” heads, while at the same time crafting powerful odes to melancholia (“Sky’s the Limit”).
:max_bytes(150000):strip_icc()/GettyImages-117928678-5c2be2d74cedfd0001219915.jpg)
No one else at the time-maybe no one else ever-married the pop savvy that B.I.G. The follow-up was just as good, though it didn’t have the benefit of his guiding hand, and that relatively tiny sample size still earns him a spot in any hip-hop discussion that involves the words Greatest or Ever. The mythology we’re left with, though, speaks to the brilliance and capital-G genius of Biggie his debut album, Ready to Die, has a legitimate claim to the title of Greatest Rap Album Ever.
#90s hip hop songs full#
Tragically, we’ll never see Notorious B.I.G.'s career reach its full potential. Are we proud of it? As proud as we are of this city. And you can listen to the greatest hip-hop songs on our Spotify playlist.ĭid we argue over this list? Of course. Time Out Music writers voted on the list, and we invited some of our all-time favorite hip-hop artists and tastemakers-such luminaries as Big Daddy Kane, De La Soul and Peter Rosenberg-to give us their personal picks. Not only is New York the birthplace of hip-hop, it’s also home to the genre's biggest star today: Jay-Z, whose cultural and fiscal influence is evidenced by his financial investment in Brooklyn’s Barclays Center, a venue/basketball team/mass-media enterprise that opened with an eight-night run of sold-out shows from the star.Īssembling this roster, we kept the big-business aspect of hip-hop in mind-so you’ll find such hefty quarterbacks as 50 Cent alongside art-world crazies like Rammellzee. Brooklyn: Busta Rhymes, Big Daddy Kane, Foxy Brown, Biggie. Queens: LL Cool J, Run-D.M.C., A Tribe Called Quest, Nicki Minaj, Nas. Namely? The Bronx: KRS-One, Big Pun, Slick Rick. You can argue with us all you like, but we will simply respond with geography and genius-the raw statistics that tell you everything you need to know about the city and its still-unfurling legacy. New York is the hip-hop music capital of the world.
