The Best Rapper Ever

The debate over who is the best rapper ever really isn't a debate at all. It's just a lot of people bringing their opinions to the table and making the case for their guy without seriously considering any alternatives. Actually, that sounds a lot like political debate.

In the musical context at least, there's nothing fundamentally wrong with this, and the debate breaks down in some distinct ways. The usual suspects get a predictable amount of support: Biggie, 2Pac, Jay-Z. Underground breakthrough favorites like Talib Kweli and Mos Def have their advocates. Hip-hop heads of a certain age, like my 9th-grade history teacher Jose, will insist that KRS-One or Rakim were the greatest MCs of all time and that all rappers who came after are just pretenders to the throne. Lots of Puerto Ricans will argue that Big Pun is the best, and white boys will throw Eminem's name in the ring. Plenty of young kids these days will say Lil Wayne.

There are good arguments to be made for all these rappers, but those aren't the arguments that interest me so much. I'm more interested in the arguments over a particular class of rappers, those whose supporters make up for their modest numbers with their outsize passion and dedication. Some lesser-known MCs with such a hard core of dedicated fans include Del the Funky Homosapien, Canibus, MF Doom, Immortal Technique, and Papoose. My unequivocal favorite rapper of all time falls squarely in this category: the late, great Big L.

This Tuesday marked the 12th anniversary of Lamont "Big L" Coleman's murder in his Harlem neighborhood. At the time of his death he had only released one album, 1995's seminal Lifestylez ov da Poor & Dangerous. Lifestylez is a difficult album to categorize. The opening track, "Put it On," is characteristic of the punchlines and multisyllabic rhyme schemes that would become his hallmark; that almost playful sensibility is also on display in "MVP" and "Let 'em Have It, 'L.'" The album suffers from generally terrible production: the beats scream mid-90s tackiness as surely as ripped baggy t-shirts or Mark-Paul Gosselaar. But it's not enough to obscure L's lyrical mastery, as evidenced by lines like, "no other rapper writes rhymes like these/ I'm cool as a light breeze/ I'm playing rappers out like strike threes."

Big L - Let 'em Have It, 'L'


Lifestylez also contains several tracks that may be the best "horrorcore" ever recorded. Tracks like "Danger Zone" and "Lifestylez ov da Poor & Dangerous" are masterpieces of the genre, and so explicit that I've opted not to post any of those songs directly on the blog in case I ever run for office or otherwise seek employment in respectable society. Yet even in those nightmarish tracks, L doesn't lose his wit or take himself too seriously: "I've got styles you can't copy b----/ it's the triple six in the mix/ straight from h-e-double hockey sticks." H-e-double hockey sticks?? How bad a guy could he be?

 While Lifestylez ov da Poor & Dangerous established Big L firmly in the underground rap scene, he was poised to explode onto the scene with 2000's The Big Picture, which was nearing completion at the time of his death. L had changed labels and was getting steady airplay for "Ebonics," the lead single off The Big Picture and a radio favorite back when people still listened to the radio.

When the album finally did come out, it didn't disappoint. Its opening track may be my single favorite hip-hop recording of all time: "The Big Picture (Intro)." It starts with an excerpt from Gang Starr's performance of "Full Clip" at a Big L tribute concert, and the song's dedication to Big L on the studio version has ensured that his name lives on over a classic Premo track. DJ Premier then cuts in with a legendary beat, and Big L finally starts rapping and absolutely rips the track to shreds. "What's this mf'ing rap game without L?/ Yo that's like jewels without ice/ that's like China without rice/ or the Holy Bible without Christ/ or the Bulls without Mike/ or crackheads without pipes..."

Big L - The Big Picture (Intro)


The first half of The Big Picture holds several more gems. "Size 'Em Up" backs Big L's high-intensity delivery with an equally explosive beat, creating the perfect tableau on which to work his multisyllabic magic. It is not unusual for his raps on this track and several others on the album to have four- or five-syllable rhymes at the end of each line; most rappers rhyme one or two syllables at most. For example: "MCs I squash and disgrace/ it's all about the Benjies/ so why your bills got Washington's face?" "Deadly Combination" with 2Pac is a classic too, and "98 Freestyle" shows Big L at his best, just rhyming and wowing the in-studio audience.

Big L - Size 'Em Up


Some of the later tracks in The Big Picture suffer from lack of actual Big L material and try to substitute guest verses or over-production to compensate. But other tracks show L leaving behind the punchlines and battle raps and demonstrating mastery of another rap style: storytelling. "The Heist" and "Casualties of a Dice Game" are straight narratives, breathless and innovative. When necessary for rhyming purposes, he doesn't shy from using decidedly un-gangsta words like "dames," "hasty," and "well-writ", or even inventing words like "crimey" (def.: a criminal associate; used for an internal rhyme with "grimy").

Some celebrities' careers probably benefited from their untimely deaths; imagine how depressing it would be to see Stevie Ray Vaughn headlining at Foxwoods or Jimi Hendrix playing the Rock 'n Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland for the benefit of the corporate sponsors. But Big L was very much the opposite. Clearly ascendant, and at the top of his craft, he was ultimately a victim of the violent street culture that ironically was the force behind his creative output.

There are arguments against anointing such a short-lived artist as the greatest rapper of all time, and they're frequently heard around the discussion of Biggie as well. To take an analogy, if a baseball player came in and played two seasons, hit .410, and had 75 homers each year, but then died or retired, could you legitimately call him the greatest baseball player ever? Well, it's my blog, and I say yes. Big L did what he could in the life that he had, dropping two unbelievable albums, and making the most of every track he was on. Sure, it's a shame that more people don't know his name. But for those who do know it, and know it well, there's really no question that he was the greatest of all time.