Schoolly D

By: Joshua Glenn

“Everybody rappin’ but they don’t know how./You shoulda seen the boy rappin’ to the cow.”

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Rakim

By: Douglas Wolk

The greatest rapper of all time? That’s a contentious one. But if we rephrase it as “most quotable rapper,” then there’s a shoo-in: William Michael Griffin Jr., the god-on-the-mic better known as RAKIM (born 1968). […]

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Slick Rick

By: Douglas Wolk

The most enduring recording of SLICK RICK (Richard Walters, aka MC Ricky D and Rick the Ruler, born 1965) is probably his guest appearance on Doug E. Fresh’s “La Di Da Di” in 1985. But […]

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Ol’ Dirty Bastard

By: Tom Nealon

If OL’ DIRTY BASTARD’s (Russell Tyrone Jones, 1968-2004) madness was a tumor pressing on his genius and making it dance, it also caused him excruciating pain. His anguished, wailing stabs at song remain some of […]

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Madlib

By: Douglas Wolk

The hip-hop producer MADLIB (born 1973) is also a helium-voiced rapper (Quasimodo) and a one-man jazz “quintet” (Yesterday’s New Quintet), among other alter egos. Since 1993, he’s contributed to dozens of recordings, and his breed […]

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Talib Kweli

By: Tom Nealon

No anti- middlebrow in recent memory has gotten more mileage (and grief) because of Middlebrow’s coopting efforts than TALIB KWELI (born 1975). Anointed the savior of hip hop after 1998’s brilliant Mos Def and Talib […]

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Dizzee Rascal

By: Patrick Cates

DIZZEE RASCAL (born 1985) grew up in Bow, an East London ghetto of burnt-out mopeds, stabbings, pitbulls, and postcode turf wars between gangs of angry teenagers. After a prescient teacher gave him the know-how to […]

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