Top 5 Old School Rappers?

[Super Ramon]

1.EAZY E
2.CUBE
3.RUN DMC
4.BIG DADDY KANE
5.LL COOL J

 

[Why-Fi]

slick rick
rakim
LL
kool moe dee
fresh prince

 

[stealthbomber]

rakim
cube
ll
krs
bdk

 

[Nemesis]

RAKIM
KANE
RICK THE RULER
KRS 1
LL

 

[BlackDiBiase]

1. LL
2. CUBE
3. KOOL G RAP
4. KRS-ONE
5. MELLE MEL

 

[Art Barr]

obviously i know about The Message and White Lines but i don't think that those 2 records ALONE are enough to put him above people like KRS & Rakim who have several classic songs/albums.

you can put krs and rakim above melle mel.

i even place in a tie bdk/ll at the three spot above melle mel.

yet melle mel can be no lower than four all time, period.

only person from the old school way of thought seeing him when it came to the sheer skilled output in discography. you and i use as the criteria to place krs and rakim above him. which is what slights caz from being mentioned in circles above melle mel is discography.

yet even caz as a skilled emcee all time is no less than top six period.
plus for his time and era as it was relevent in that day.
argueably caz was actually a better skilled emcee.
plus the showdown between him and melle.
when caz uses the castlevania line,..is still a hof moment in clashes between what was the original two goats.

the only reason in general caz is not honored more for his skills is discography.

yet, you really can not strike him out for discography.

as he was doing it before industrialized rap discographies were of value, or even made, manufactured or produced.

that is also,...why i said the timeline for the thread starter's thread kinda kills the discussion.

as it is not fully indicative of what transpired in history, culturally or industry wise.


art barr

 

[Reggie]

Grandmaster Caz deserves to be on everybody's list. Looking at that Ice-T documentary gave me a new respect for that man.

 

[DaveyDave]

Grandmaster Caz deserves to be on everybody's list. Looking at that Ice-T documentary gave me a new respect for that man.

he suffers from the same thing i was talking about with Melle Mel. they came up and had their prime in the time before Hip Hop was on wax for the most part.

 

[Why-Fi]

slick rick
rakim
LL
kool moe dee
fresh prince

i missed "81-91" in the OP, in which case i have to replace kool moe dee and fresh prince with qtip and guru

 

[The Ruler 09]

Melle Mel had a lot of songs other than those two.

 

[The Ruler 09]

Didn't Cold Crush have a lot of tapes though? That were selling well?

 

[The Ruler 09]

Rakim
KRS-One
Big Daddy Kane
Slick Rick
Kool Moe Dee

 

[The Ruler 09]

I missed out Chuck D, would put him in mine.

 

[CourtesyFlusher]

i really can not honor the content of this thread.

as it has no bearing on the segueway from the oldschool to the new school way of thought.

you really can not judge ol school to new school emcees.
as the old school suffered from monopolisitc/capitalistic/materialism based on sort of culturally rudimentary pagan ideals in a hiphop context.

when it came to picking its largest drawing and skilled artist.

whereas the newschool way of thought.

dealt with more pillar skilled content based and minded ideals at its core.

so trying to pick and mix ol school way of thought emcees, in that window of time.

over new school way of though emcees from 81-91,..is a tough task.
you would be better off just asking for a goat list.

or a best ol school top five list, from 74-85 aNd a separate new school top five list from 85-91.

as you really can not kinda judge ol school and new school in that window.

as the content upon which theories of thought they are based.
are firmly and vastly differing from one another in that time period.
while also completely and drastically in stark contrast are juxtaposed from one another.


art barr

You sound like a pretentious fagget

 

[feelosofer]

Real talky if your gonna go from 81 to 91. Melle should arguably be in the top 3. The stuff dude was spitting and the rhymes schemes he was coming up with weren't done before, and he moved the artform forward lyrically and socially. The reason he's not higher on these lists is because a lot of you guys were too young to realize how great he was in that 2nd wave era, Rakim, Kool G, Nas, AZ, almost any rapper specializing in complex and multi rhyme schemes. While rappers have improved and surpassed him technically Melle Mel and crew literally laid the foundation for the art-form as we know it, right down to the popularization of the term, hip-hop.

Furthermore, I feel 81-85 and 86-91 are kind of two different eras, so my list is somewhat hard to quantify because the feel and mentality of the music changed drastically in that 10 year period, because in the late 1980's you saw commercial forces like MTV begin to take hold as well.

That being said my list:

Rakim
Kool G Rap
Melle Mel
KRS-One
Slick Rick

basing this on their work prior to '91 otherwise, I'd switch G Rap and Rakim