Black Thought Shares His Top 5 MCs List

Black Thought has been in the industry for a while, so he should know a thing or two about good rappers. He is now revealing his personal top five list of rappers. 

He sat down with HipHopDX to talk about about the emcees that he believes paved the way. His list, in order order, consists of Kool G Rap, Big Daddy Kane, Rakim, Chuck D, and LL Cool J.

“I could kick Kool G Rap’s rhymes, from ‘Poison’ or ‘Men at Work’ or ‘Road To Riches’ forever — and these are songs that are already 35 years old,” he said to the outlet.

When referencing Chuck D’s role as a sociopolitical minded emcee, he praised how iconic his work was.

“Chuck was all activist, right?” Black Thought said. “His last concern was cadence and flow. He was just more about getting you the information, being on beat, grabbing your attention, smacking you saying: ‘Wake the f**k up.’ And that was a brave, again, stylistic decision to make at the time.”

Black Thought explained that Big Daddy Kane and Rakim's rhymes were "Shakespearean."

“Big Daddy Kane was far more stylistic than technical, or just as stylistic as he was technical, and he was smooth, right? He was a smooth operator,” Black Thought explained. “What both Kane and G Rap, and also Rakim, brought to the table was a different cadence that we hadn’t heard before.”