5 Rap Artists Who Immediately Bring Down The Property Value of Every Song They Guest On
This might be a strange thing for me to write about, but recently I went throwback and picked up a lot of old Redman songs on iTunes. One of the songs was Da Goodness, which features Busta Rhymes in a characteristically awful guest spot. It got me thinking.
1. Busta Rhymes The inspiration for this post. I swear Busta Rhymes' career zenith came in the ten vitriolic seconds of hot fire he spits on Puffy and Biggie's "Victory" off 1997's No Way Out. The man is incendiary. Since then, he has become a comic-book pitchman for Mountain Dew and ruined fantastic songs by Joe Budden, the aforementioned Redman, and less-fantastic songs by The Pussycat Dolls.
Angry Busta Rhymes is spectacular. Happy Busta Rhymes ruins songs.
2. Birdman The co-inspiration for this list, because he's like a proverbial brick wall on about a million Lil Wayne songs. Baby Williams is an uninspiring MC who raps unconvincingly about selling drugs in between rote shoutouts to Red Monkey jeans. The worst is, due to some kind of misguided loyalty, Lil Wayne tends to give up about 33% of his verses on otherwise spectacular songs to his quote-unquote Daddy, which means you'll be listening to the best rapper alive absolutely murder a beat and then, inevitably, Birdman will come on the second verse and the whole thing just grinds to a miserable halt.
3. Will.i.am I don't even know if this man is a rapper or what, but whenever he shows up on a song I want to kick someone and I usually do.
4. Lil Kim Not really fair because she doesn't actually do guest spots anymore, though she's attempting to return to cultural relevance by picking fights with her cultural successor/superior Nicki Minaj. Her verse on Ray J's "Wait A Minute" could very well be the worst guest verse in the history of music, though, and frankly when she comes on at the end of most of those Biggie/Puffy/Ma$e jams from Bad Boy's heyday I just turn the damn song off.
5. Snoop Dogg Haters to the left. This man cannot rap anymore. Oh, he could, and I still bump his classics. But lately his name on a track list means fiasco. I think the tipping point was on Eminem's "Bitch Please II," where Snoop's verse rivals the above-mentioned Lil Kim verse for worst all-time. It's like he was rapping without actually hearing the backing music. No concept of the beat at all.
This summer's verse on Katy Perry's "California Gurls" or whatever just solidifies his decay.
And Five Reliable Guest-Spot All Stars
1. Lil Wayne is the most prolific rapper alive and probably the best, too. He makes good songs even better (see Hilson, Keri, "Turning Me On") and elevates mediocre R&B jams (Jay Sean's "Down"). And every Birdman track features a Lil Wayne guest verse, which almost makes every Birdman track redeemable. Almost.
2. Fabolous seems to exist only to make terrible music palatable. He's a perennial underachiever when it comes to his own singles/albums, but from Christina Miian to Jesse McCartney to Jennifer Lopez to Tweet, even, Fabolous can be counted on to deliver a pretty tight sixteen bars.
3. Niki Minaj On this list almost solely on the strength of her verse on Kanye West's "Monster" this fall. Verse of the year hands down.
4. Eminem Having a career resurgence this year. Recent verses on Nicki Minaj's "Roman's Revenge" and T.I.'s "That's All She Wrote" build on the highlights from this year's Recovery album (he leaves Lil Wayne in the absolute dust on the Haddaway-sampling "No Love"), and are enough to make me pretend that everything after The Eminem Show never happened.
5. Drake I find this guy's persona incredibly annoying, but his verse on Lil Wayne's "Right Above It" is my theme music right now, and he tends to deliver a quality verse on every song he guests on. Except for that awful "square root of 69" fiasco on Rihanna's "What's My Name," which is a stellar song regardless.
Go forth and download! Just lay off the Busta Rhymes, my god.
1. Busta Rhymes The inspiration for this post. I swear Busta Rhymes' career zenith came in the ten vitriolic seconds of hot fire he spits on Puffy and Biggie's "Victory" off 1997's No Way Out. The man is incendiary. Since then, he has become a comic-book pitchman for Mountain Dew and ruined fantastic songs by Joe Budden, the aforementioned Redman, and less-fantastic songs by The Pussycat Dolls.
Angry Busta Rhymes is spectacular. Happy Busta Rhymes ruins songs.
2. Birdman The co-inspiration for this list, because he's like a proverbial brick wall on about a million Lil Wayne songs. Baby Williams is an uninspiring MC who raps unconvincingly about selling drugs in between rote shoutouts to Red Monkey jeans. The worst is, due to some kind of misguided loyalty, Lil Wayne tends to give up about 33% of his verses on otherwise spectacular songs to his quote-unquote Daddy, which means you'll be listening to the best rapper alive absolutely murder a beat and then, inevitably, Birdman will come on the second verse and the whole thing just grinds to a miserable halt.
3. Will.i.am I don't even know if this man is a rapper or what, but whenever he shows up on a song I want to kick someone and I usually do.
4. Lil Kim Not really fair because she doesn't actually do guest spots anymore, though she's attempting to return to cultural relevance by picking fights with her cultural successor/superior Nicki Minaj. Her verse on Ray J's "Wait A Minute" could very well be the worst guest verse in the history of music, though, and frankly when she comes on at the end of most of those Biggie/Puffy/Ma$e jams from Bad Boy's heyday I just turn the damn song off.
5. Snoop Dogg Haters to the left. This man cannot rap anymore. Oh, he could, and I still bump his classics. But lately his name on a track list means fiasco. I think the tipping point was on Eminem's "Bitch Please II," where Snoop's verse rivals the above-mentioned Lil Kim verse for worst all-time. It's like he was rapping without actually hearing the backing music. No concept of the beat at all.
This summer's verse on Katy Perry's "California Gurls" or whatever just solidifies his decay.
And Five Reliable Guest-Spot All Stars
1. Lil Wayne is the most prolific rapper alive and probably the best, too. He makes good songs even better (see Hilson, Keri, "Turning Me On") and elevates mediocre R&B jams (Jay Sean's "Down"). And every Birdman track features a Lil Wayne guest verse, which almost makes every Birdman track redeemable. Almost.
2. Fabolous seems to exist only to make terrible music palatable. He's a perennial underachiever when it comes to his own singles/albums, but from Christina Miian to Jesse McCartney to Jennifer Lopez to Tweet, even, Fabolous can be counted on to deliver a pretty tight sixteen bars.
3. Niki Minaj On this list almost solely on the strength of her verse on Kanye West's "Monster" this fall. Verse of the year hands down.
4. Eminem Having a career resurgence this year. Recent verses on Nicki Minaj's "Roman's Revenge" and T.I.'s "That's All She Wrote" build on the highlights from this year's Recovery album (he leaves Lil Wayne in the absolute dust on the Haddaway-sampling "No Love"), and are enough to make me pretend that everything after The Eminem Show never happened.
5. Drake I find this guy's persona incredibly annoying, but his verse on Lil Wayne's "Right Above It" is my theme music right now, and he tends to deliver a quality verse on every song he guests on. Except for that awful "square root of 69" fiasco on Rihanna's "What's My Name," which is a stellar song regardless.
Go forth and download! Just lay off the Busta Rhymes, my god.