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| GQ magazine names 'The 25 Worst Rapper of All Time' |
Men's fashion magazine GQ has compiled a list of the '25 Worst Rappers of All Time' in their July 2013 issue. Granted some of the artist who made the list, weren't rappers, more so venturing into the genre of Hip Hop for a moment, but there are plenty who are now infamous for their laughable 16-bars.
23. CHINGY
After Nelly brought St. Louis lingo to the masses, Chingy appeared in 2003 with a debut that made his STL
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| Rapper Chingy made GQ's 'Worst Rapper List;' nice to look at, horrible to listen to |
21. TOO $HORT
Not even Too $hort will be surprised to see Too $hort's name on this list. "Serious hip-hop fans, they'll boldly say, 'Too $hort ain't the best, Too $hort ain't got the best lyrics,'" he admits. This pioneer of Bay Area hip-hop has had an unusually long career—even he's lost track of how many records he's done—most of it pedestrian. He has no interest in being "a rapper who rapped in metaphors, and said slick shit," he declares, which is kind of like a NASCAR driver saying he doesn't want to drive fast.
20. WILL SMITH
At this point, he'd duet with Frank the Pug if he thought it would sell a few extra movie tickets.
18. SOULJA BOY
In "Pretty Boy Swag," Soulja Boy repeats the song title, with the same dead inflection, thirty-six times. By reducing hip-hop to chants, ringtone beats, and vapid boasting, he has inspired a notable generation gap: everyone over 25 seems to hate him, from LeBron James to Ice-T, who accused him of "single-handedly killing hip-hop." Because ganging up on somebody is always wrong, and because we're equally capable of killing hip-hop, we've written about half of a song for Soulja Boy: "Man I look pretty / Your mama's ass is shitty / Gonna buy a big watch and wear it 'round the city." The more times you say it, the better it sounds!
See who else made the list after the break.
17. WEED CARRIERS
Once rappers become stars, they have the leverage to drag friends along with them into prosperity. They also need someone to transport weed, a job that dates back at least to "Spanish Tony" Sanchez, who was Keith Richards' personal drug mule. "Weed carrier" (aka baggage handler, tree stasher, or weed wallet) is the unflattering term to describe rappers who perhaps might not have record deals if an influential friend hadn't demanded it: The Bravehearts, St. Lunatics, and D-12.
13. MASTER P
When people praise Master P, it's usually for his bootstrap entrepreneurship: he rose from one of New Orleans' most despairing housing projects into a self-described "ghetto Bill Gates," though unlike the man born Percy Miller, Gates never branched into sports management, films, clothes, or phone sex. Master P was notorious for ostentation, including 22-carat-gold panels on his bedroom ceiling. (His net worth was once estimated at $361 million; four years later, he filed for bankruptcy.). But songs are virtually interchangeable, he's often accused of jacking ideas from other rappers, his lyrical signature is a constipated grunt (Uhhhhhh!), and in a Fortune magazine profile, a competing rap executive described P's record label as the "McDonald's of hip-hop," though to be fair, he appeared to mean it as a compliment.
12. PRINCE
If you're a singer who knocks rappers for being tone-deaf, as Prince did in "Dead on It," it's best not to be a singer who's beat-deaf and raps in a stiff, elementary way, as Prince did in the early 1990s on "My Name Is Prince," "Days of Wild," and a few others. Actual couplet: My name is Prince, and I am funky / When it come to funk, I am a junkie. Okay, but when it comes to rap, you are a flunky.
11. EAZY-E
He had some malevolently funny lines (I'm Eazy E, and I got bitches galore / You might have a lot of bitches, but I got much more), but they were usually written by Ice Cube, who said it took "days" for Eazy to clumsily record his snaps. ("I can't do this shit," Eazy complained when asked to rhyme.) A small man—Cube called him a half-pint bitch, and Snoop referred to him as Tattoo—with a voice pitched midway between Geddy Lee and Fran Drescher, he was a one-dimensional gasbag with the rhythmic grace of a dot-matrix printer.
9. PITBULL
A Cuban-American Vanilla Ice who flacks for Dr Pepper and Bud Light—try mixing those two for a fun speedball!—Pitbull specializes in mind-numbing Eurodisco about hot girls and nightlife, with witless, winking reminders of his heritage: My tongue is bilingual, ready to play with that spot where you tingle.
7. MC HAMMER
When people remember you more for your pants than your lyrics, it's a bad sign.
6. PUFF DADDY (P DIDDY)
He's hit a trifecta: mocked on The Daily Show, on South Park, and in The Onion. Daddy/Diddy has a terrific ear for shameless hooks, and he knows the hustle, which is why he has money hangin' out the anus, to quote his most memorable lyric. But as a mumbly, indistinct rapper, he wouldn't be signed to any label he didn't own.
Read the full list here [GQ]