RULE, stop trying to take my title of whitest westcoast fan ever. My FB page isn't filled with me drunkenly throwing up dubs for nothing. In hindsight this is shite because now I'm like "The fuck do I do for a tinder profile pic?".

Anyways....

1. 2pac

In the first bracket of rappers I listened to. My brother got his Greatest Hits album, either late in the 90s or early 2000s. Along with Ludacris Word of Mouf, these were my first kind of entries into rap. 2pac's music was always so fucking dope. The beats were classics, his voice worked perfectly, his features were always fire and you could kick back and smoke a joint or have some beers at a party to his music. When I got older, I started to get the actual technical side of his raps and got an appreciation on that front. The topic matter was diverse as fuck and maybe cause of his acting skills, outside of Eminem, I don't think I've ever heard a rapper put more of his spirit behind his words before. You fucking felt 2pac's convictions when he spoke.

2. Eazy E

We fall back to some more light hearted rapping here haha. People will always say "Oh, but he didn't write his own raps, Ice Cube did". Excluding the fact that I'd say Eazy's best rapping is on Real Muthaphukkin Gs, I really couldn't care less if he wrote it. I can write better than 99.9% of rappers in my sleep. I like to listen to music, and Eazy had some classic songs and always sounded like a fucking gangster on them. The dude could deliver a line slick as fuck. Be it Eazier Said Than Done, We Want Eazy, Dope Man, Eazy Duz It, Gimmie That Nut, No More Questions, Nobody Move and loads more. The dude's tunes were cracking, he was hilarious and cool as fuck. "One more before we end this session" "What's your real age?" "No more questions".

3. NaS

Classic after Classic. NaS, again like Eminem, is one of the few guys to have put his entire life into his music. You hear NaS wondering what he'd call his first born child, his influences and homages to them, collabing with his brother and dad, his love and them hatred of Kelis, his aspirations of money and then the reality of it, his situation with his former record label, the beef with Jay Z...NaS has went through absolutely everything in his life and put it down on a track. While I'd say he was a bit less impressive than AZ on the mic, NaS just has so many absolute classics songs that fit so many moods. When I heard Made You Look on the Luke Cage soundtrack, I remember thinking "This shit actually IS the sound of New York".

4. Warren G

This is a weird addition because I don't have quite the catalogue of music I love from him as the others. But it barely matters. Regulate G Funk Era is probably my favourite album of all time. Sitting in your back garden, blunt in one hand and an ice cold bottle of bud in the other. Sun blazing. "You don't see what I see, every day as Warren G". That album is the ultimate sunny day shit. It's like a cover to cover mix of shit on par with Will Smith Summertime. Back when I was on welfare, which now that I'm working and in full time uni living myself sounds like a fucking dream in hindsight, I'd be sitting in my back garden feeling like a fucking gangster getting high and drunk as neighbours looked at me disapprovingly from their windows haha.

5. Snoop Dogg

Does every song include his spelling out his own name? Sure. Do I care? Do I fuck. This guy's been producing classic songs from the day he picked up the mic. A few years ago I tried getting into the underground scene in westcoast rap a bit and found Snoop was having a big part in helping artists rise up. But I found that him simply collabing on a song made it 10 times better. The guys slick as fuck and adds that to any song he's on. While his individual albums in the past 5-10 years haven't been great (my first rap album buy was Blue Carpet Treatment), they don't take away the absolutely incredible Doggystyle, The Doggfather, Eastsidaz, 213 and his collabs with DPG. Snoop's got too many great songs to mention, but in a day in age where the only rap song I'm likely to hear at a party of club is the fucking abysmal Big Sean "I don't fuck with you", the welcome interjection of Next Episode still makes me turn into straight G mode with flawless rapping and scoffing at people who don't know who's back up in this motherfuckkkkkkaaaaaaaaaa (what what what what).



Honourable mentions: Big L, Professor Green, Ghostface Killah, DMX, Ice Cube, The Game (Really wanted to add Game in but couldn't put him over Snoop).

RULE, stop trying to take my title of whitest westcoast fan ever. My FB page isn't filled with me drunkenly throwing up dubs for nothing. In hindsight this is shite because now I'm like "The fuck do I do for a tinder profile pic?".

Anyways....

1. 2pac

In the first bracket of rappers I listened to. My brother got his Greatest Hits album, either late in the 90s or early 2000s. Along with Ludacris Word of Mouf, these were my first kind of entries into rap. 2pac's music was always so fucking dope. The beats were classics, his voice worked perfectly, his features were always fire and you could kick back and smoke a joint or have some beers at a party to his music. When I got older, I started to get the actual technical side of his raps and got an appreciation on that front. The topic matter was diverse as fuck and maybe cause of his acting skills, outside of Eminem, I don't think I've ever heard a rapper put more of his spirit behind his words before. You fucking felt 2pac's convictions when he spoke.

2. Eazy E

We fall back to some more light hearted rapping here haha. People will always say "Oh, but he didn't write his own raps, Ice Cube did". Excluding the fact that I'd say Eazy's best rapping is on Real Muthaphukkin Gs, I really couldn't care less if he wrote it. I can write better than 99.9% of rappers in my sleep. I like to listen to music, and Eazy had some classic songs and always sounded like a fucking gangster on them. The dude could deliver a line slick as fuck. Be it Eazier Said Than Done, We Want Eazy, Dope Man, Eazy Duz It, Gimmie That Nut, No More Questions, Nobody Move and loads more. The dude's tunes were cracking, he was hilarious and cool as fuck. "One more before we end this session" "What's your real age?" "No more questions".

3. NaS

Classic after Classic. NaS, again like Eminem, is one of the few guys to have put his entire life into his music. You hear NaS wondering what he'd call his first born child, his influences and homages to them, collabing with his brother and dad, his love and them hatred of Kelis, his aspirations of money and then the reality of it, his situation with his former record label, the beef with Jay Z...NaS has went through absolutely everything in his life and put it down on a track. While I'd say he was a bit less impressive than AZ on the mic, NaS just has so many absolute classics songs that fit so many moods. When I heard Made You Look on the Luke Cage soundtrack, I remember thinking "This shit actually IS the sound of New York".

4. Warren G

This is a weird addition because I don't have quite the catalogue of music I love from him as the others. But it barely matters. Regulate G Funk Era is probably my favourite album of all time. Sitting in your back garden, blunt in one hand and an ice cold bottle of bud in the other. Sun blazing. "You don't see what I see, every day as Warren G". That album is the ultimate sunny day shit. It's like a cover to cover mix of shit on par with Will Smith Summertime. Back when I was on welfare, which now that I'm working and in full time uni living myself sounds like a fucking dream in hindsight, I'd be sitting in my back garden feeling like a fucking gangster getting high and drunk as neighbours looked at me disapprovingly from their windows haha.

5. Snoop Dogg

Does every song include his spelling out his own name? Sure. Do I care? Do I fuck. This guy's been producing classic songs from the day he picked up the mic. A few years ago I tried getting into the underground scene in westcoast rap a bit and found Snoop was having a big part in helping artists rise up. But I found that him simply collabing on a song made it 10 times better. The guys slick as fuck and adds that to any song he's on. While his individual albums in the past 5-10 years haven't been great (my first rap album buy was Blue Carpet Treatment), they don't take away the absolutely incredible Doggystyle, The Doggfather, Eastsidaz, 213 and his collabs with DPG. Snoop's got too many great songs to mention, but in a day in age where the only rap song I'm likely to hear at a party of club is the fucking abysmal Big Sean "I don't fuck with you", the welcome interjection of Next Episode still makes me turn into straight G mode with flawless rapping and scoffing at people who don't know who's back up in this motherfuckkkkkkaaaaaaaaaa (what what what what).



Honourable mentions: Big L, Professor Green, Ghostface Killah, DMX, Ice Cube, The Game (Really wanted to add Game in but couldn't put him over Snoop).