Rapping is one of the most impressive displays of language you could show. There are so many different directions you could take it, in flow, delivery, and word choice. But it’s also not about creating jumbled up word salad either. Sure, you can come up with a million different rhymes and rap fast. But it takes a special talent to utilize the fullest capacity of language and literary understanding. Who wields literary devices with the most color? Who paints the clearest picture in their imagery? Rapping is a skill that can be honed and used in mind-blowing ways.
Consequently, Noisey has picked four of the best lyricists of all time. We set out to find four rappers in the vast hip-hop ecosystem that display the full literary capacity of the genre and culture. Additionally, who are some artists that go beyond technical feats of rapping? While this list doesn’t include every rapper, here are four that push the art form to its literary limits.
4 of the Most Literary Lyricists in Hip-Hop History
MF DOOM
MF DOOM was one of the strangest, most daring rappers to ever grace a microphone. The way he would embody other alter egos to change the perspective of his lyrics. The way he would use every literary device to dazzling effect, from similes and metaphors to allusions and onomatopoeia. DOOM approached rap with limitless imagination, and it resulted in timeless underground classics.
billy woods
Our greatest sages and prophets have an uncanny way of reflecting the world back at us. In that case, billy woods is one of our greatest minds working today. His writing is deeply visceral, a scathing examination of how imperialism and capitalism has rotten the purity of humanity. woods continuously shows us the true core rather than attempting to romanticize the few positives we hold onto in our lives.
His Backwoodz Studioz label described his last effort GOLLIWOG best. “GOLLIWOG is a haunting collection that weaves horror, humor, surrealism and Afropessimism into a cinematic tapestry, aided and abetted by a murderer’s row of producers. African zombies, time traveling trap cars, malevolent ragdolls and a dying Frantz Fanon are just a few of the revelers in woods’ danse macabre,” it reads.
Ka
Ka rapped in parables and war stories. The grizzled Brooklyn bred rapper was a firefighter and 9/11 first responder with a wise, gritty depiction of street living. He would often place these tales through epic, mythic scale depictions. Through evocative imagery, he would examine how our everyday life isn’t too dissimilar from past poetry and literature.
Take “Sirens” off of The Hermit & The Recluse, where Ka takes inspiration from the story of Orpheus. “For the weak moves, these dudes eat your food like harpies. Not just car thieves, large pleas, came home hardened murderers. By the death toll, would’ve thought the threshold was guarded by Cerberus,” Ka rapped. “It’s hard to love, and if only God could judge, who need juries? Weighin’ the crime, still payin’ for mine, haunted by the three Furies.“
Andre 3000
One of the greatest rappers of all time, regardless of the flimsy arguments that suggest otherwise. Andre 3000 combined strong imagery with an immense talent for internal rhyme schemes. Consider how he bends and slants words to rhyme in his last verse on “Aquemini”. Or take the devastating writing on display for his feature on Kanye West’s “Life Of The Party”. “I’m startin’ to believe ain’t no such thing as Heaven’s trumpets. No after-over, this is it, done.
If there’s a Heaven, you would think they’d let ya speak to your son,” Andre sighs. A lot of times, the best writing hits directly to the core. The Outkast legend knew how and when to wield his literary devices to colorful and downtrodden effect.
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