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My Seven Favorite Rap Voices of All Time (Pt. 1)
When it comes to history’s even somewhat memorable rappers, their songs tend to be as unique as their fingerprints. It doesn’t matter if they all dive headfirst into the latest slang or line up for a signature beat from the exact same producer — from the moment they’re released, the songs almost always remain unequivocally theirs.
Rappers borrow lines from one another all the time, but one of the reasons rap lacks other genres’ rich history of formal cover songs is that the artists tend to personalize their material, referencing themselves in their compositions far more frequently than their rock or pop contemporaries (the 1974 hit “Bad Company,” from English rock band Bad Company, off their album Bad Company, is perhaps the most notable exception). It’s like how Jay Z (aka Jay Hova) said “H to the izz-O, V to the izz-A” in his 2001 song “Izzo (H.O.V.A.),” for example, but Bono never recorded a “U to the Tiz-Zoo,” although I imagine he very much wanted to do so, and just kept getting outvoted by his peers.
Another explanation for the relative cover song scarcity is that rappers tend to mention current trends, entertainers and technology far more frequently than other performers, which means their work often becomes timestamped the moment it’s released. In 2001’s “Young’n (Holla Back)” for example, Fabolous said, “Pimpin — Here’s a new…
