At the Top level it becomes less about skill and more about style. Plus I think it depends on who you first saw come up, like cars, clothes, movies, etc. you saw in high school just become the basis for cool. As you get older you focus less on cool / relevant and more on grown shit but you don't forget what it was.


For me LB Text Top 10 of All Time (by style preference):
iLLimit, UNKNOWN ARTIST, Jason, Real Talk, Lockhart, Bleu, Seul, RULE, DaDDiO & ILLoKWENT

As far as Audio goes it's LoD, M-Rock & then everyone else

If we're talking Best All Around Battler I would say Punk has to be considered #1, he's able to navigate all 3 formats (Audio, Tracks & Text) at the highest levels. While we've got plenty of great Audio & Text battlers and some who went on to Live Battle it's rare they worked on Tracks / kept working on them.

As far as battling goes it's hard not to give it to Lockhart. Maybe if he hadn't transitioned to live battles and continued to be successful you could argue against him, but he has.

Stricc is probably my favorite live battler to come out of LB but he didn't put in the work to get to GOAT status on the site.

I'm not as concerned about tracks. Battle rappers don't often make good music. They are separate skills. Some people can do both successfully but its rare. Shout out to Punk again here though as one of my favorite track makers from the site.

Based on success:

Conceited
Charron
Lockhart
Homeskool

Honestly, there is many to consider. We all view each craft in a different way: Text, Audio and Tracks.

There is also the time period or "era" of each candidate to be considered as well. The competition at "their time" and so on. Its not such an easy task to say who's the GOAT as many of us are from different era's and have seen the rise (and fall) of different people in different categories. You can't say person A from 2006 is worse than person B from 2012 (really) as the craft evolved over time. Same as Hip Hop itself.

Text: (in no order)
DaDDiO
Jason
Mayneak
RULE
Lockhart
Bleu
Seul

Audio: (in no order)
Bleu
Lockhart
Phil Banks
stric
Krhyme Killz
Seul
Bnas (lol)
Ticket
ALL BORO
M-Rock

Tracks: (in no order)
Just C
Punk
ALL BORO
M-Rock


These lists are just off the top of my head, if i spent more time on it, there would be more added to the list. As i said above, its not an easy question as there are many factors to be thought of.

Someone giving Homeskool his flowers on LB. I like seeing that.

Yeah. TBF I forget about Homeskool a lot because he didn't really shine on the site much. Glad that weirdo is finding some success though.

I'm seeing a lot of recency bias in your list..like I said earlier, Real Talk would probably have a slot in all 3 of those categories. People were dominant in different eras. At one time Danger Rich, Saint C, & Tha Duke ran the audio section & had some dope diss tracks too. Meta 4/So Amazin/Mahvulus, YOU WISH/UNKNOWN ARTIST had their stretches of dominance regardless of if they won a tournament or not. Illimit is another dude I'd throw up for text/audio/track.

Imo the GOAT picks weigh more if you're looking at people active from 2006 - 2014 because the talent pool was so much bigger back then vs the 2014 - 2022 talent pool & that's not a shot at anyone who's been winning tourneys post 2014 but we've been complaining about the site being dead since the early 2010's which is around the time there was a mass exodus of talent.

At the very least we're comparing an era that had 500 active members, 40-50 dope ones, 64 man tournaments to an era with 50 active battlers, 10-15 dope ones, struggling to fill 16 man tournaments. 2014 - 2022 was favorable to everyone who participated in 5 tournaments a year because when you're dealing with 16 - 32 people you already have better odds than the 2006 era battlers qualifying for a spot in a 64 man tournament.

Like I said... off the top of my head, if I sat and thought about it, thered be more...

https://i.ibb.co/7Y8D5JN/giphy-3.gif


And early LB would completely wash tf out later LB...word up

You’re not included in the early LB success, pal. Sorry.