U keep reversing what I'm saying. If u say Bland is soul-blues, (per my admittedly oversimplified lil formula) that makes him a blues artist who is soul-influenced. 'Soul' in that case is the adjective; 'blues' is the noun. (Hyphen notwithstanding, of course.)

And in that particular example, the two could be flipped ('blues-soul') and it wouldn't be wholly inaccurate. Late 50s/early 60s southern soul is about as close as you can get to the blues without being the actual blues. Not as marked a difference between genres as 'rap-rock' or 'hip-hop soul.'

And I still don't see the big deal with the Kris Kross thing.

Well, of course, because hip hop culture is more than just the DJ and MC.



But hip-hop music is broad and comprises more than just rap music. That's what allowed the genre and culture to grow in the first place--the experimentation, innovations.

It definitely is gospel when the trinity of hip hop pioneers (Bam, Flash, Herc) agree on just what hip-hop music is.





Yes, artists aren't necessarily historians and can be totally biased to work in their favor. There's always going to be that ignorance around. For example, what's rampant in hip-hop is this self-hype of "I'm the greatest rapper in the world" or Diddy claiming he "invented the remix," silly stuff like that.

However, it is gospel when the founders all agree on the diversity of hip-hop music and are saying that it's more than just rap music. That's the root.

Can we really argue with living primary sources like this, the architects of it all?

For the record, I agree that hip hop is more than just rap music. Rap music is just a facet of the greater hip hop culture. But, again, I felt the need to be more streamlined in my approach to this list i.e. the analogy I made with pop music.

I know Master P is more of a hip-hop entrepreneur/mogul than an artist, per se, but I'm a little surprised he's not included on the list.

Great List(ecspecially your top 10)!!! Disagree with the that Eric B. & Rakim are better than the Notorious B.I.G.(Lyrically) and also than Dr.Dre(as a rapper/music producer genius)....a few tweaks should be made but over all it's a pretty good list!!! hands down

Jay-Z ahead of BIG?

Looks like you're right for once.

The only "wins" Outkast have against ANY artist in the top 10 are impact and popularity, which are supposed to matter the least.

Outkast vs NWA? Both Dre AND Ice Cube deserve a better placement than Outkast does, and to be perfectly honest, as a solo artist away from NWA E still influenced and signed a group that has outsold Outkast.

Bone thugs: Innovation and Impact/ Outkast: Popularity (Even if E. 1999 was the best selling album of either group, considering doubledisks of Sb/tlb's length count as 2 copies.) Influence is a push, but would probably swing towards Outkast.

Nothing is a push when you compare bone thugs to outkast; its a complete sweep. What did bone thugs impact? What parts of the industry did they innovate? Nothing, really. Speakerboxxx sold 11 million copies in America.

i still don't understand any objective reasoning for Eminem to be as low as he is. its just a blatant rewriting of history and ignoring his enormous popularity, his reputation within the rap world, his importance in the elevation of rap to the dominant form of rock music commercially, and his cultural impact. and because nobody wants to be the one that actually comes out and says "wtfuck is Eminem doing out of the top 10" because then they will lose their credibility, even though its far more fucked to have him in the 20s than it is to have him top 5-10...

my version of the top 25, albeit based on my own criteria: musical importance (influence and innovation), critical acclaim, cultural impact, and popularity...

1. Public Enemy
2. Run-D.M.C.
3. 2Pac
4. Jay Z
5. N.W.A.
6. Eminem
7. Eric B. & Rakim
8. Notorious B.I.G.
9. Outkast
10. LL Cool J
11. Nas
12. A Tribe Called Quest
13. Kanye West
14. Wu-Tang Clan
15. The Beastie Boys
16. Grandmaster Flash & the Furious Five
17. Ice Cube
18. Big Daddy Kane
19. De La Soul
20. Lil Wayne
21. Snoop Dogg
22. Boogie Down Productions
23. Afrika Bambaataa
24. Dr. Dre
25. Scarface

By the way, where's P.M. Dawn on the main site list? Surely they deserve to be in the Top 100 somewhere.

pave, I agree that Eminem is Top 10 material.

God, I hate this list.

What has Eminem done to change rap? And he didn't move the crossover of suburban listeners to rap; that was all ready happening in the 80s, mind you. This counts as influence, and originality, and impact.

Also dont throw in that its a rewriting of rap history, you're a pretty biased person to throw that around when it comes to eminem, and thats a pretty serious charge (that its done on purpose to give white rappers, or at least eminem, smaller importance on the genre)

for starters, he was the most crucial rapper in shifting the tone/subject matter in the early part of the 00s. the immediate trend following the deaths of Tupac and B.I.G. was to get away from the streets and violence and focus on celebrating style and riches. at least in mainstream. Eminem's subject matter took a few different paths, each going in a radically different direction from each other and from what was popular at the time: took horrorcore to mass audiences, put the focus back on social and political issues, focused heavily on satire especially of the media and suburbia... sometimes, like with his commentary on Columbine, he did all those things. other times, those were separate and depended on whether he was speaking as Slim Shady or Eminem. all this he did while spending a good portion of his albums directly speaking of personal experience growing up in the midwest (midwest and southern rap were the big changes in the 00s from the west vs east rap of the 90s; thanks to Eminem and Kanye and in the south thanks to Outkast and Nelly among others).

and yes, the crossover to mainstream was already happening. but you can't tell me he didn't take it a large step forward, especially in the midwest and especially among young white teens (not to mention, making rap that was different, in terms of tone and image, from the images of inner-city black culture... which changed how it was received among young white teens in the midwest who before then had tried to adopt black culture because that was the main imagery in the most popular forms of rap in the mid-90s).

how can you deny that he had a major impact on rap music? i just can't understand that.

i'm not suggesting he's the 6th most important artist in rap. i'm suggesting that he's one of the top 1 or 2 most popular and that when you combine his enormous popularity with his cultural impact, plus his reputation as an emcee within the rap community, and then you add his perhaps top 20 importance, that a top 10 spot should be in order.

how is that crazy logic on my part?