Drake

Thread make me realize it’s really a lot less S Teir lyrical rappers than people realize and outside of a few of these guys on this list you could safely say the commercial rappers that get staned (the Jays, Waynes, Drakes, Kendricks, etc) are the best rappers in the world and the notion that there is some coalition of underground rappers who are 1000x better than them is just conjecture

Relapse Era Eminem

Also Supreme Clientele era Ghostface

Would never deny his wordplay, but has he ever released dope album?

Pusha is incredible. Truly one of my favorite rappers ever

Bro paints pictures with coke lines

the danger mouse collab from 2 years back + his 9th wonder collab tape

yak ballz

I was talking about Loaded Lux, lol.

I see Ye as being like Dre.....someone who can sound very great and skilled with the right writers but not really a strong lyricist on his own.

Ye's a GOAT hip hop artist but not a GOAT lyricist by any measure.

9 pages and no one mentioned Big Pun :vlosereave:

you replied to a comment about a black thought freestyle

That was a Loaded Lux freestyle he linked me to. I asked if Loaded Lux really be rapping like that.

im re.tarded

I’d throw Kendrick, Rakim, Jay Z and AZ somewhere there too but solid list

There's plenty of rappers on their level lyrically. Lupe, Kool G Rap, Pun, Ab Soul, JID, etc. It's just that they're not as great at song structure as the more mainstream lyricists.

50 Cent actually spoke on this a while back because 50 used to write hooks for lyrical rappers including Banks and Game and help them learn how to structure songs.

$ilkmoney

Boldy James, 9 pages and bruh only had 1 mention. KTT gotta do better

Why not? Without the few complex projects he has he's still high up there.

Never understand the 3k thing either, hardly has things of his own to speak to. Has the least rapping rapping out of any of the praised rappers.

True

However if GKMC is S tier then his S has to span at least 3 projects from S80 to TPAB imo

Oh, I don't think so, he's a battle rapper init, most of them don't but are usually better lyricists

lil wayne aint make the list ????

There's so many different avenues that combine to give you what we call a good lyricist, let a lone being hailed as a great rapper by the masses which leans a little more into requiring charisma and voice and image and being somewhat in line with what's popular than the former.

Mach Hommy is a "so good you can sit googling his references from a single song because he's so above your head half the time", moreso than ANY of those including whoever a "hip hop head" would claim is the best ever including Nas. Those best ever lists and repeated names are mostly based 0n what makes you seem credible because other people will agree.

But he (Mach) doesn't write song concepts let alone craft a lyrical album nearly as good as GKMC TPAB Kendrick. Other than Mach, I agree with your sentiment and will even further it by saying almost all the underground rappers that come up being known as a lyrical savior that's better than the mainstream are not that good.

Like Joey Badass was a legend at 17 on 1999 but after that he became straight trash but still will hold the mantra of being a lyrical savior. Griselda too kinda have an image of being some lyrical masterminds? But most their s*** is just relatively slow rap about the same vanities.

Someone like Wayne has way too many similes and similar schemes that it sometimes comes off annoying hearing him end back-to-back lines with "like ___". That's a flaw in songwriting but we all know he could freestyle circles around anyone dead or alive.

People try to discredit Drake as not even close to any of those lyrical greats and it's so funny because he's a great songwriter that got better from the cornier similes of his early days. I see people completely forgetting his past.

Basically I'm trying to say being an S tier lyricist is much more than people who don't make music think it is just album after album of braggadocios similes and the nostalgia factor would make people laugh at you if you said Drake is a better writer than their favorite 90s rapper.

Earl Sweatshirt is a better poet than almost all of the rappers listed these lists like these but he won't get his shine because people overlook what genius level poetry is. Way more concise and abstract than anything these rap saviors can make.

S Tier lyrics is way more than just bragging about slanging while saying you're like this and that and cat and hat.

Good writing is making the concept circle back and weave throughout the song. Complex rhyme schemes beyond just ABAB the entire song,

vocabulary and
coming up with the right syllable sounds to fit the pockets,maybe even adding in internal rhyme before the end of each bar,

bars that are witty enough to not sound like any 10-year old that can come up with
but not such obscure rambling that it won't hit with anyone,

using repetition, storytelling, alliteration and all that and mixing that with current pop culture to give you a good chorus or lines that everyone might wanna shout out whether it's a club pop hit or boombap, those are both good lyricism. I think even someone like Sexxxy Redd knows what she's doing in that regard. Compare every bar of hers being catchy to a similar thot-music making rapper like Megan Thee Stallion's song Body and the writing is ABSOLUTELY TRASH except that catchy chorus.

Even Wu-Tang is some of my favorites but music is relative to the current era and some of their songs if they came out today would amount to 100 songs of writing "my pen is insane I'm a master with my sword" in different ways. But people that want to seem credible would laugh at me if I said Drake is a way better songwriter than Inspektah Deck. Music has evolved to where I heard a Prince song last week say "I love you baby that's no lie I love you more than I did when you were mine" and I thought it was s*** writing

Some of these rappers you guys claim are so lyrical just come up with s*** a 10 yr old can make up like "I'm cool as a fan, I cook with my hand" but over a respectable enough non-trap beat and people will automatically associate that with being a more talented artist than anyone in trap. In an old thread someone was telling me that 1 guy whose name I forgot but you guys know him he's hailed as some underground lyricist just because he's different from other Atlanta rappers who are all melodic now. He literally said a bunch of remedial single syllable 5th grade words and when it got to "I glow like the sun" I just laughed at how relative these opinions are to the times.

You can even argue that there's not much that separates a GUCCI MANE from these rappers people call lyrical other than his beats and slowness and southern accent which sounds "slow" to non-Southerners. Same braggadocio let's make every line rhyme with the same single syllable 3 letter word the whole 3 minutes