most impressive hip hop songs/verses, lyrically

May 4, 2023 7:28 AM

Calling to mind the wordplay involved in Big Pun's Twinz ("dead in the middle of Little Italy little did we know that we riddled some middlemen who didn't do diddly"), what are some other epic examples of amazing lyrics in hip hop songs?

"Amazing lyrics" can be defined as wordplay like in Twinz, or incredible verses like Nicki Minaj's in Monster, or a whole song that's super lyric-driven.

I'm getting more and more into hip hop (I love Rakim, Nas, Kendrick Lamar) and I am very much a WORDS person, so I fall in love with amazing lyrics combined with a flow.

Open to anything and everything that comes to mind!

posted by knownassociate to Media & Arts (22 answers total)

There's always Deck's verse in Triumph.
posted by ignignokt at 7:34 AM on May 4, 2023

There's this video from Vox, which reviews verses from MF DOOM, Rakim, Biggie, Mos Def, Andre 3000, Eminem, and Kendrick Lamar with illustrations about rhythm and rhyme scheme.
posted by kevinbelt at 7:54 AM on May 4, 2023

All of De La Soul's 'Stakes is High,' but especially Dave's verse

Beanie Siegel's verse on The Roots' 'Adrenaline'

Biggie's verse with Mister Cee (and Tupac, Big Daddy Kane, Shyheim, and Skoob)

Lots of Blackalicious, but I'll go with 'Release'

Common's 'The 6th Sense'

J-Live on Handsome Boy Modeling School's 'The Truth'

Killer Mike's verse on Run the Jewels' 'Reagan'

Lauryn Hill's 'Lost Ones'

LL Cool J on EPMD's 'Rampage' (there's a whole subcategory of rappers making guest appearances on other people's tracks and then just murdering them, see also Nas on Main Source's 'Live at the Barbecue,' AZ on Nas's 'Life's a Bitch,' Eminem on Jay-Z's 'Renegade,' etc., and then a sub-sub-category of people on a posse cut showing up everyone in the room, Kool G. Rap on 'The Symphony,' Busta Rhymes on ATCQ's 'Scenario,' Biggie on Craig Mack's 'Flava in Your Ear' remix, etc.)

O.C. on 'Time's Up'

Raekwon's verse on Wu-Tang Clan's 'C.R.E.A.M.'

Yaasin Bey (pka Mos Def)'s 'Mathematics'
posted by box at 8:02 AM on May 4, 2023

All of De La Soul's 'Stakes is High,' but especially Dave's verse

Agreed with this. A few more of my favorites are Definition by Blackstar (Talib Kweli's verse) and Mos Def's verse on Re:definition; Nas's Nasty; anything from Kendrick Lamar's To Pimp A Butterfly.
posted by entropone at 8:20 AM on May 4, 2023

Agree with "Mathematics" so much. KRS-One is one of my favorite lyricists. From "Wannabeemceez":
Triplet syllables for minimal criminals
Lyrical riddles that got hard flavors in the middle
Sit back and chittle as I stand and still rebuild on skills
The admission of serial lyrics, calculated to weaken the spirit
Will be diverted by this lyric when you hear it
Ricochet any style any day
Any which way and you'll Cherish the Day like Sade
The advanced oratorical techniques I speak
Keep the heat at full peak! My grammar
With stamina, grabs a rapper like the fresh catch of the day
And crack the back of that DJ
I'm strappin and attackin a pack
And whatever happens after that just happens, FACT

Also the whole album Let's Get Free by Dead Prez.
posted by RobinofFrocksley at 8:31 AM on May 4, 2023

Cats Van Bags by Atmosphere is amazing, both lyrically and just as a song.
posted by Slinga at 8:53 AM on May 4, 2023

Kool Moe Dee I Go To Work. The video is atrocious, but the rhymes and delivery.....smoooth.
posted by conifer at 9:06 AM on May 4, 2023

Ren. Off the charts musician, lyricist, storyteller. Mad flow.

Genesis live, one take
The Hunger live, one take
Money Game Pt 2

If you are not familiar with this artist, you might go with Hi, Ren first. (live with guitar, 1 take which was the best of 4 takes).
He's been gathering steam the last couple years but this one, released in Dec 2022, hit 11M views recently and there are tons of interesting reactions to it (also some bad ones). It is... something else.

For something completely different, live storytelling
The Tale of Jenny & Screech (Full) 3 live with guitar short tales, in order
posted by Glinn at 9:29 AM on May 4, 2023

I'm seconding MF Doom

there are wordier artists, artists who spit faster, but for me Doom lands exactly right
posted by elkevelvet at 10:22 AM on May 4, 2023

I really like the wordplay of Das Racist. Sit Down, Man and Shut Up, Dude are both full of great lines. Since you mention Little Italy, I'll quote this bit from Rainbow In The Dark:

Known to rock the flyest shit and eat the best pizza
Charge that shit to Mastercard, already owe Visa
Catch me drinking lean in Italy like I was Pisa
We could eat the flyest cave-aged cheese for sheez, ma

Yeah, we could eat Gruyère
As if we care, we could eat Broquefort
Or we could just kick it like Rockports
In the periphery of Little Sicily
posted by SaltySalticid at 10:55 AM on May 4, 2023

kevinbelt's video link is awesome.

This is super chatfilter-y, but I throw some links in:

Black Thought's Hot 97 Freestyle

Lyrics Born always gets criminally underrated in my opinion:
Lyrics Born - Do That There
Blackalicious f Lyrics Born - Do This My Way

Lupe Fiasco - Put 'Em Up

MF DOOM - All Caps

I'll also leave this short video of Shock G talking about Biggie and Tupac's flows
posted by gnutron at 11:16 AM on May 4, 2023

If you can feel my pain say 'yes'
If you can feel the pain say 'stress'

Here's what your history books won't show
You're a dead man for fucking with American dough

My life is valuable and I protect it like a gem
Instead of cops shootin' me I'm goin' out shootin' them
posted by box at 11:40 AM on May 4, 2023

Hamilton
posted by Iris Gambol at 12:02 PM on May 4, 2023

Hip Hop Quotables in The Source (note that this column ran monthly for years, and some months were richer than others)
posted by box at 2:03 PM on May 4, 2023

They call me the Hiphopopotamus
Flows that glow like phosphorous
Poppin' off the top of this esophagus
Rockin' this metropolis
I'm not a large water-dwelling mammal
Where did you get that preposterous hypothesis?
Did Steve tell you that, perchance?
Steve.

Flight of the Conchords - Hiphopopotamus vs. Rhymenoceros
posted by Adifferentbear at 3:15 PM on May 4, 2023

This one's pretty inside-baseball, and maybe not that impressive in 2023, but in 1981 Kool Moe Dee changed rap battles forever. The very old-school Busy Bee went first, with the crowd-rocking party rhymes that were the style of the time. Then Kool Moe Dee came out with this:

Hold on, Busy Bee, I don’t mean to be bold
But put that “ba-ditty-ba” bullshit on hold
We gonna get right down to the nitty-grit
Gonna tell you little somethin’ why you ain’t shit
posted by box at 3:51 PM on May 4, 2023

I've always appreciated LL Cool J rhyming "hornier" with "cornea" in Back Seat.

Eminem's first album, where he's mostly rapping about being poor, has some great lyrics, especially Rock Bottom.
"Minimum wage got my adrenaline caged
Full of venom and rage, 'specially when I'm engaged
And my daughter's down to her last diaper, it's got my ass hyper
I pray that God answers, maybe I'll ask nicer"

I also appreciate him rhyming "naughty rotten rhymer" with "Marty Schottenheimer" in I Just Don't Give AF.


Someone else has mentioned Hamilton, and I would put Satisfied up there as the best wordplay in the musical. "I know my sister like I know my own mind, you will never find anyone as trusting or as kind. If I tell her that I love him, she'd be silently resigned. He'd be mine. She would say 'I'm fine', she'd be lying."
posted by cali59 at 7:27 PM on May 4, 2023

Here's a deep cut (pun intended) -- Ocean Within by KRS-One and Saul Williams from the Slam soundtrack.

I think about Kris's verse all the time, and I first heard this over 20 years ago.
posted by Bobby Bittman at 9:48 PM on May 4, 2023

Man, I'm gonna be posting answers to this all night.

One really underrated quality in MCing is phrasing. Shaping the words to match the beat. Slick Rick is the master of this in my opinion, and his track Mistakes of a Woman in Love With Other Men is an amazing example of this. In another rapper's hands these words would all be rushed through to get them out in time but he just makes them fit the beat like a fuckin' glove. Slick Rick Top Five All Time!
posted by Bobby Bittman at 9:54 PM on May 4, 2023

OK, last one. For just sheer raw lyrical power, punch you in your face fuck you battle rhymes, over one of the sickest beats of the '90s, Fat Joe and Big L basically mop the floor with all of New York City on The Enemy, produced by DJ Premier.

(If you love Pun you can really hear in Joe's verse how Pun studied him and took it to another level.)

Two minutes and 48 seconds of rap perfection.
posted by Bobby Bittman at 10:01 PM on May 4, 2023

OK, last one for really real this time. Talking about Big L brought to mind about ten more songs. To this day he still doesn't get enough dap for what an amazing storyteller he was. People talk about Biggie being a lyrical screenwriter, this track is right up there too: Casualties of a Dice Game. I always wished the Hughes Brothers would have directed a music video for this.
posted by Bobby Bittman at 10:04 PM on May 4, 2023

Briggs and Trials as AB Original are great, check out the Golden Era tracks too.
posted by geek anachronism at 7:51 PM on May 5, 2023