Surprisingly, Kanye West doesn’t rate himself as the greatest rapper to have ever lived, and, considering his penchant for labelling himself one of the world’s most underrated musical geniuses, that’s truly saying something. In truth, his pick for “the greatest rapper of all time” will leave hip hop fans scratching their heads.
Honestly, this is a topic that will quite frankly never be settled. If you think that sales equate to talent, Drake will be your pick, while others from the old school will say, Nas. The fact is, it’s subjective, and there will never be a definitive answer, yet, that doesn’t stop us all from being guilty of debating it until the cows come home.
While we will never conclude the subject, Kanye West’s say on the matter is an opinion of enormous weight. He’s arguably the most influential artist of the 21st Century, from his work with Jay-Z as a producer, before refiguring hip-hop with albums like The College Dropout and My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy.
Kanye isn’t just a rapper, but an artist in every sense of the word is what makes him an enigma, and perhaps, his versatility is why he shied away from naming himself as the best pound for pound MC on the mic.
In 2013, after landing at number seven on an MTV list about the best rappers, West decided to tell DJ Enuff on The Angie Martinez Show his thoughts on it all. “I’m happy for [Big] Sean,” he said about the rapper who topped the list. “But I feel like he should be on top five. He’s bodying records, like the way he started off that ‘Mercy.'”
Ye then explained why he should be higher placed, noting, “What happens with them… I had like the pink polo and the backpack and I’m checkin’ all the boxes of that Tribe Called Quest era and J. Dilla and all that, so they wanna champion it. They don’t like Givenchy Kanye. They don’t like Kanye in a kilt. They don’t like Kanye in a relationship.”
West then said that the most fire rapper was Lil Wayne, adding, “Yeah, I just think… him and [Jay-Z] and [Eminem] and certain people are just the greatest rappers of all time.”
The love-in is mutual, with Weezy saying in 2020, “I rock with anything he does. That man’s a genius. He did a whole show with a mask on,” Wayne told Elliott Wilson for his CRWN series.
He added, “When he came out with the mask, I was like, ‘This n**** crazy,’ so then two songs go by, ‘This n**** crazy, he still got that mask on.’ That’s crazy as hell ‘y’all know I couldn’t do no shit like that. I found myself out of breath in that bitch. Now you know that’s a show.”
West’s opinion is eight years old, and the number of times he rethought Donda provides a glimpse into his everchanging mind, so who knows whether Wayne is still parked at the top of his list. One clear thing is that Yeezy and Weezy both respect the hell out of each other.
