Celeb News: The 10 Greatest Rappers of the Last 5 Years.

Willy.

The past five years (that’s September 2008 to September 2013, when we’re being strict about it) have been as interesting as any such stretch in rap history. The genre wasn’t exactly revolutionized as much as it has modernized. 2008 and 2009 were transitional years, when we ironed out the kinks of the new age of hip-hop—the Rap Internet age, highlighted by shifting cultural values and a greater emphasis on independence and niche.

Things that seemed impossible in 2003 started happening with regular frequency: Rick Ross survived being exposed as a corrections officer and beefing with 50 Cent, the once “producer who wants to rap” Kanye West became the “nucleus” of pop culture, Jay Z found a way to become the first rapper in his 40s who was still on top of the game. Meanwhile, newcomers like Drake, J. Cole, and a host of other promising talents emerged, boasting a new aesthetic, one that idolized Kanye West and discarded much of the gangster rap baggage that had defined hip-hop in the ‘90s and early 2000s.

As we previously did with beats and verses, we explored the best rappers of the last half-decade to see how the changes in rap’s cultural landscape were reflected in who we thought were the best MCs.

10. J. Cole
9. Kendrick Lamar
8. Lil Wayne
7. Gucci Mane
6. Jay Z
5. Rick Ross
4. Eminem

3. Nicki Minaj

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She's said it herself and it's true: Nicki Minaj raps better than most of her male contemporaries. Oddly, this seems to be something that has hurt her, in terms of getting the respect she deserves, as much as its helped. It makes men feel uncomfortable that there's a woman who raps better than them. Period.

But since her career-making guest verse on Kanye West's "Monster," a verse where she bested all her testosterone-heavy competition, since her second official solo single, "Your Love," made her the first female artist to top the chart unaccompanied since 2002. Since her debut album, Pink Friday sold almost two million copies, and her follow-up Pink Friday: Roman Reloaded, cemented her status as a blockbuster, it's been something people have had to deal with: her talent seems to know no bounds. And rapping really, really well, and making pop hits are not mutually exclusive endeavors.

But that's the thing about Nicki: she hasn't had that front-to-back classic rap album yet. She's made some amazing efforts, teetered between rap and pop, and electro and R&B, but there isn't just one concise exhibit of her ability to rhyme at the level that we know she can. If there was, you might see her up at No. 1 or No. 2 on this list.

On 2012's Pink Friday: Roman Reloaded-The Re-Up, Nicki addressed her success, and her consciousness of decision to go mainstream, and how much hate she received for that. "They'll never thank me for opening doors but they ain't even thank Jesus when he died on the cross/Cause your spirit is ungrateful/Bitches is so hateful, I remain a staple" on "Freedom." She's backed it up. In the face of an industry who doubted her lyrical strength because she excelled on pop songs ("Starships") and dabbled in other genres outside of rap, she hasn't spit one guest verse over the past six months that hasn't left fans, male and female, salivating over the prospects of her next album.

Over the past five years, we've watched Nicki grow from mixtape phenon to Wayne's pet project to a world-wide star with three hit albums of rap, pop, R&B, and more. She's never been predicatble. This summer, when rap fans were thinking she went too mainstream, she came with killer verses on Busta Rhymes' "Twerk It" and Ciara's "I'm Out." Maybe The Pinkprint will be more rap-centric, or maybe it won't. In the end, Nicki doesn't have to cater to rap fans. She knows her own power, lyrically and musically. And, as has become very clear, she'll use it however the **** she wants.

2. Drake

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Five years ago, you'd be hard pressed to find people who could see this coming. After all, in 2008, Aubrey Drake Graham was still that Canadian ex-Degrassi star with the decent-but-nothing-special mixtape Comeback Season, and had managed to get his video on BET a few times. But that was the same year his music made his way to Lil Wayne, who saw something special in the double-threat rapper who sings (or singer who raps), and took him out on tour with him, beginning the anointing of his stardom. It was the beginning of the ignition sequence, sure, but Wayne taking a former teen Canadian soap star on the road with him as the Next Big Thing was weird. What came next was just straight up unreal.

In 2009, Drake released So Far Gone. It's not the fact that everything about it set it apart from everything else in 2009 that makes it great. It's that those things, those creative risks that Drake took, they weren't just opportunities to be different for the sake of being different that were seized upon when the whole world was beginning to watch. It's that they were simply better than almost everything else out there. The cover. The guest spots, which ranged from Bun B to Wayne to Trey Songz and back. The beats, those dark, ominous, sparse productions that opened up to reveal lush soundscapes unlike anything being heard in rap at that moment, by this "40" guy Drake kept calling out (one who music writers would later clamor for interviews with). And the samples, which ranged from Swedish indie darlings like Peter Bjorn & John to Swedish indie songstress Lykke Li, to Santigold, to Jay-Z and even Kanye West. The songs themselves were nothing short of incredible, and even more incredible was the fact that they came together on that tape in a coherent way, weaving a narrative of an introspective kid who seemingly had it all, but didn't, and who questioned his self-worth while always working hard to gas it up (whether or not he deserved it or not). Hell, even the mixtape name, which came from a conversation between Drake and Oliver North about how terribly they treated women? That was different.

But then, there were the raps themselves: Whether it was Drake's hashtag flow, or simple teardowns of himself, there was something equal measures absurd, but sharp, slick, and pointed about what he was doing, all of which was underscored by a self-conscious depth no other rapper even remotely close to his level of frighteningly innate talent had or was exhibiting. He ruled the summer with "Best I Ever Had," an absurdly charming single which made him a ubiquitous rapper who anticipated the ways you would hate him before you could articulate them yourself. By the time you realized it, it was too late. You were hooked. And of course, 2009 was also the year "Forever" was everywhere, a single that more or less minted him into the current crop of top-tier rap artists, if only by his place among the others (Kanye, Em, Wayne).

2010 saw the release of Thank Me Later, Drake's official studio debut record. It was a much, much different Drake than the one on So Far Gone, one who was being poised for a cultural takeover, one who would be accompanied by a star-studded cast of guest players including Alicia Keys, Nikki Minaj, T.I., The-Dream, Jeezy, and Wayne. Thank Me Later was the summer blockbuster to So Far Gone's indie sleeper, and yes, it alienated some core Drake fans. It also won him a world of core rap and rap-pop crossover fans who hadn't yet fallen in line. Four distinct singles ("Over," "Find Your Love," "Miss Me," and "Fancy") made the album inescapable, to say nothing of its deeper cuts ("Up All Night," "Fireworks") that seemed equally planted all over the culture.

In the time between Thank Me Later and his next studio album, Drake started to appear everywhere. On Jay-Z's Blueprint 3. On Ross's Teflon Don. On Rihanna's smash single "What's My Name?" On "I'm On One" and "She Will" and "The Motto" and "It's Good." Odds are, if you were making a rap song or a rap album then, you wanted Drake to be in its orbit. And more often than not, he was, and he was there delivering smash verses, too, absolute, undisputed, show-stealing knockouts. At a certain point, it's almost a running joke, the rap game Catch-22: You can have Drake on your song, if you're lucky, at which point, he will then steal your own song from you.

But then, at the end of 2011: Enter Take Care, an album that begins with a drippy piano line and the words "I thought I killed everybody in the game last year, man/**** it, I was on, though." It was hard to argue with him, and even harder as he made his case for the next seventeen (okay, fourteen) songs, each one delivering the various degrees of Drake we'd met along the way. Drake was singing. Drake was rapping about catching bodies. Drake was going in on a Grand Canyon-sized Just Blaze beat with Ross. Drake was throwing down for Toronto. Drake was rapping about relationships, gone good, and gone bad. Drake was rapping about his crew. Drake was having a round of introspection about the women in his life. His mother. His ex-girlfriends. His grandmother. Drake was there alongside a perfect lineup of guest spots: Ross, Rihanna, The Weeknd, Wayne, Nikki, Birdman (in full Birdman soliloquy form), Kendrick Lamar, Andre 3000. Then there were 40's beats, a musical style that seemed to evolve in tandem with Drake's rapping, the kind of sonic evolution that felt missing from the crystalline production of Thank Me Later that finally fell into place. And of course, there was "Marvin's Room," the ultimate synthesizing of the Drake ethos. Take Care earned Drake a Grammy, for very, very good reason: It's an incredibly well composed album, one that delivers on any and all promises Drake has made over the course of his career (maybe a little too much, with its protracted length, but who's arguing with it?).

In 2012 and 2013, in the wake of Take Care, Drake was everywhere, moreso than ever: As his album burned, he kept the fire going by contributing to every and any solid single that he could, intent on stealing the spotlight from whoever was smart (or naive) enough to welcome him onto their track: "Pop That" and "Stay Schemin" and "No Lie" just to name a few. "Poetic Justice" and "****in Problems" and "Amen" to name a few more. But Drake's guest spot output slowed towards the middle of this year, as he started dropping more of his own material, a few songs at a time: "Started from the Bottom," the slow-burn slam-dunk single of the summer. Or "5AM in Toronto," which prominently features Drake absolutely topping himself in terms of sheer rap dynamics. Or "No New Friends," in which he runs away with another DJ Khaled hit. Then there was the "Versace" remix verse, where he rendered Migos all but irrelevant on the Atlanta group's own track (sorry, but it's true). Or "All Me," in which he referred to himself as the "light skinned Keith Sweat," and nobody blinked, as if this were a perfectly normal thing for Drake to say (because by this point, it was). As we started the run-up into fall, Drake started showing a different side of what was to come: "Hold On, We're Going Home" was a straight-up R&B jam with old-school ideas embedded in its sonic fabric. "Wu-Tang Forever," with its absurd title, was an equally absurd proposition of Drake vacillating wildly between rapping and singing in a way that felt, somehow, after all this time, still audacious. And then his album leaked, and it's since destroyed the Internet, when not sending every music writer who's had to spend hours pouring over it to a corkscrew or their ex-girlfriend. Drake's new album has probably racked up more billing hours for the psychiatrists of millennials since the week they all graduated college. He ****s people up that badly.

And now, here we are: Yes, Drake is the second-most dominant rap act of the last five years. Five years ago, it seemed implausible. Now, it doesn't seem like it could have gone any other way. He has vanquished what few enemies he's had, if not made them look at the very least foolish. He has made the old men look like geriatrics, and the younger men look like children. He's won the hearts and minds of everyone. You. Your mom. Your grandmother. Whoever. He is capable of being a complete affront to everything some people hold sacred about rap while at the same time epitomizing everything some people love about rap. Or R&B. It barely makes a difference anymore. The only thing Drake can't do yet is produce, and hopefully, he never will (his dedication to having a longtime collaborator in 40 is the kind of Dre/Snoop or Dre/Em or Ye/Jay classic rapper-producer relationship we need more of). If he continues at his current rate, the only thing left for Drake to do, really, is outlast the next guy on this list, and hang on as long as he possibly can. —Foster Kamer

1. Kanye West

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Look, we'll keep this brief, since we already know what some of you are going to say.

Angry Complex Hate-Reader: (in caveman-esque angry commenter voice) Man, **** Complex, y'all are just a bunch of Kanye dickriders. I'm going to leave a comment! [Leaves comment that reads 'FUK COMPLEX U JUST KANYE DICKRIDEERZ thats yur opinion and its stupid bcuz j cole/wale/mac miller/TDE/ace hood is the best you bitchz.']
We'll stop you right there, and save you the comment:

1. Calling Complex "dickriders of Kanye" or whathaveyou for crowning him the best rapper of the last five years is like calling your math teacher a "dickrider of algebra" when solving for X.

2. No, whatever rapper you put in there is not the best rapper of the last five years. They just aren't. You can argue, but you're wrong.

3. The reason for this is that Kanye has done more to push the musical boundaries of rap than anyone on this list, while still maintaining what is more or less an impossibly high standard.

4. And also, actually, thanks for reading!

Let's review, shall we?

2008: Kanye releases 808s and Heartbreak, an album that takes the autotune trend of the moment to the utmost extreme, and records a heartbreaking record that involves singing, rapping, and a transformation that puts him past the realm of rapper, and singer, and producer.

2009: Kanye flips his **** at Taylor Swift, but also, basically speaks the truth. Destroys Jay-Z on "Run This Town." Crushes it on "Make Her Say" and "Kinda Like a Big Deal" and "Walkin On The Moon" and every other monster guest verse he drops that year.

2010: Kanye drops My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, indisputably one of the greatest rap records of all time, a pop masterpiece that is as vulnerable as it is bombastic, a theatrical production in every sense of the word. The art for the album is done by George Condo. The line of singles released in the lead-up to it are almost alll stunners. His VMA performance makes the actions of a passive-aggressively vengeful Taylor Swift look like those of pop music's borderline-Grand Wizard aspirant.

2011: Kanye raps on and produces Watch The Throne, the long-awaited luxury rap superalbum, featuring himself and Jay-Z, packaged inside a gilded Riccardo Ticsi box. When touring for the album, Jay and Ye would go on to play "Paris" as many as eight times in a row on some stops.

2012: Kanye releases G.O.O.D. Music's first crew album, Cruel Summer. Initially met with critical hesitation, the album eventually yields a few bangers, three of which become the summer's biggest songs ("Mercy," "Clique," and "Cold"). Oh, yeah, and kills it on "Birthday Song."

2013: Kanye releases Yeezus, a ten-track album that is utterly ****ing transcendent in that it infuriates rap fans who wanted club-banger Kanye to feed them hits, and instead got Artist Kanye who made a record about telling corporate sponsorships, the government, the rap game, and anyone who wants to box him in to rightly **** themselves. It is still the best album to come out this year, in any genre of music, let alone rap. Its collaborators range from the hardest pride of Chicago's 2013 rap scene (Chief Keef, King Louie) to his high-note go-to, Justin Vernon, to TNGHT, to Daft Punk, to Rick Rubin, to dancehall artist Assassin, and then some. Kanye first debuted songs from the album during the Met Costume Gala, and then on walls, projected, around the world. He rapped about coming on your Hamptons spouse's blouse on Saturday Night Live. He released his funniest, angriest, most artistically risk-taking and rewarding album to date. And he released it the same week his first child was born.

So where are we in 2013? Well, Jay Z is shilling for Samsung and taking dashes out of his name. Lil Wayne is still rapping about his scat fixation and cashing in on the first two years of the last five. And then there's Drake, who is undoubtedly nipping at Kanye's heels, but still lacks the sheer artistry to pass Kanye, relying on a bevy of brilliant, young, scrappy collaborators to help him do so. And not that Kanye didn't do the same thing with Yeezus, but the difference is in the people, and Drake, Jay, and Wayne don't even need more of them. Consider: Drake's only real feature on his new album is Jay. Jay needs features like Justin Timberlake to attract the attention of the masses, who he pre-purchased a million albums for. And Wayne is still trying to recreate the success of the first half of the last five years, and like Jay, is tapping all the help he can get to do so (while being slightly less discerning about it).

The most popular act to guest on Kanye's new album is Daft Punk, and they're a production credit. He doesn't need Jay. He doesn't need Wayne. He doesn't need Drake. Kanye can simply rely on his own instincts as an artist, and rely on his reputation to be able to tap the help he needs, even if that help isn't always going to get the most prominent look from it. The people Kanye are working with now know the reward isn't in the look so much as it is in the art, in the place in history, which is how he can convince them to do it. Of all of the aforementioned rappers, which of them truly have vision? Which of them have vision and can rap like there's no tomorrow? And which of them have vision, can rap like there's no tomorrow, and continue to turn out bangers?

There's only one. Kanye's the best rapper of the last five years not just because he's done more for transcending the simple and prescribed role of rapper as artist, although that could be enough. But beyond that, quite simply, he's just made better music than anyone else. That's it. That's just all it comes down to.

http://m.complex.com/music/2013/09/g...ars/kanye-west

JessicaVanessa

I mean Nicki should have been #1 but she's a female so... nice placement.

☈evolusion

Looks pretty accurate to me.

Forevermore

Drake should be #1, but ok.

Penk

Kendrick should be higher.

Willy.

Quote:

Originally posted by JessicaVanessa

I mean Nicki should have been #1 but she's a female so... nice placement.

Kanye + Drake definitely triumph over her, in the grand scheme of things. I agree 100% with the list.

!Blue!

Queen

Drake and Kanye on #2 and #1

Rogue

Auris

The king of modern music deserving his spot at #1

SebaMonster

Accurate, even though J Cole deserves to be higher.

Oh and I agree with what they say about Nicki, it's very accurate. Couldn't be more true.

Alvajay

How tf Gucci gon be higher then Kendrick

complex stays making themselves more and more unreliable with the sh*t they throw in sometimes

Αnt

The list should be

1. Drake
2. Nicki Minaj
3. J Cole
4. Eminem
5. Kendrick Lamar
6. A$AP Rocky
7. Macklemore
8. Lil Wayne
9. Jay-Z
10. Kanye West

King Maxx

They were right. Lyrically Nicki is better than Drake. But he makes better/more hip-hop music than her. 100% agree with it.

Willy.

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Originally posted by SebaMonster

Accurate, even though J Cole deserves to be higher.

Oh and I agree with what they say about Nicki, it's very accurate. Couldn't be more true.

I'm saying

Αnt

Quote:

Originally posted by King Maxx

They were right. Lyrically Nicki is better than Drake. But he makes better/more hip-hop music than her. 100% agree with it.

I'm sorry I stan for Nicki but Drake is lyrically better than her.

JessicaVanessa

Jermaine deserves to be right where he is and steadily incline.

Willy.

It's from the past five years. September 2008-September 2013.

Kanye killed the world when he dropped his masterpiece in 2010, which is why he deserves to be #1.

Adele Addict

Here's how it should be....
1. Eminem.
2. Eminem.
3. Eminem.
4. Eminem.
5. Eminem.
6. Eminem.
7. Eminem.
8. Eminem.
9. Eminem.
10. Eminem.

Auris

Quote:

Originally posted by Lust For Love

The list should be

1. Drake
2. Nicki Minaj
3. J Cole
4. Eminem
5. Kendrick Lamar
6. A$AP Rocky
7. Macklemore
8. Lil Wayne
9. Jay-Z
10. Kanye West

Kanye is 100% deserving of the #1 position. He could have just dropped MBDTF or Yeezus and still gotten #1.

JessicaVanessa

Quote:

Originally posted by Alvajay

How tf Gucci gon be higher then Kendrick

complex stays making themselves more and more unreliable with the sh*t they throw in sometimes