In the early 2010s, vets sticking to their traditional style is as much a part of hip-hop's landscape as newer artists. Disagree? Allow these words from the song's first verse to represent his thoughts: 'Real n*ggas celebrate it, finger-fuck whoever hate it.' - Matt Barone He's made bigger, more successful records since, but as evidence that the kid who flipped Paula Abdul's pop-cheese 1988 hit 'Straight Up' into a crossover triumph, 'Who Dat' remains untouchable. Cole also came ready to embarrass fools: 'Boy, stick to ya day job, said you was hot, but they lied/Is that ya girl? Well, I just g'd her, no A-Rod.' He's both reflective and relentless.Īt its most forthcoming, 'Who Dat' displays an awareness of Cole's newfound celebrity status: 'My life accelerated, but had to wait my turn/But then I redecorated, that means my tables turn.' He's also conscious of the fact that he's still unproven to most listeners: 'Now I'm a menace, God as my witness, with this pen I'm insane, yup/Hungry like the n*gga who ain't got the taste of fame yet.' And just in case his candidness leaves isn't fully convincing, J. Either way, his flow is assured, the bars packed airtight with multi-syllabic rhymes and clever double entendres. Or to just embarrass his next-generation peers with nary a wasted line heard throughout the track's four thunderous minutes.

Over a simple, breakbeat-like percussion arrangement (co-produced by Cole and Elite), Cole rips through 'Who Dat' like a man on a mission, perhaps to make sure nobody ever questions he scored such a prime role on a Jay-Z album. But when Cole released his first solo, Roc Nation-backed street single, 'Who Dat,' in May 2010, they realized that this born star was also a lyrical monster. 9, 'A Star Is Born.' They hadn't heard the Fayetteville, NC, native verbally eviscerate tracks on his two earlier mix tapes, The Come Up (2008) and The Warm Up (2009). When one-million-plus fans purchased Jay-Z's The Blueprint 3 in late 2009, their first exposure to one Jermaine 'J.' Cole came on track No. Not all hip-hop heads are up on the mixtape circuit-some don't venture far beyond albums they can pick up at Best Buy, and those usually have widely known rappers' names on the covers. RELATED: Pigeons & Planes - The Best Pick Up Lines From Rap Lyrics RELATED: The 100 Greatest Hip-Hop Beats of All Time RELATED: The 50 Best Guest Verses of All TIme RELATED: 25 Rap Albums From the Past Decade That Deserve Classic Status Listen to Complex's Most Lyrical Rap Songs playlists here: YouTube/ Spotify/ Rdio

These are The 30 Most Lyrical Rap Songs of the Past 5 Years. We've taken a look at the last half decade of hip-hop to figure out what 'lyrical' rap looks like in 2013. The best rappers, whatever their relationship to 'lyrical' rap, make verses that have you hanging on every word, punchline, narrative, image, and/or bit of knowledge. In fact, it's their relationship with the 'lyrical' that makes 'lyrical' something even worth discussing in the first place.

That doesn't mean that rap artists who subvert, mutate, or even undermine that tradition are less hip-hop, or that they don't make good music. But the term is still useful, because it distinguishes hip-hop from pop music more broadly. At its worst, calling a rapper 'lyrical' makes their art sound more like a math problem. Sure, 'lyrical' can be misused in hip-hop, ascribed to the dry technical aspects of MCing. The one constant: an artfulness to how each rapper creates his work. A fan of Southern street rap might have a different idea of 'lyrical' than a fan of underground hero Tech N9ne, who in turn has different values than a traditionalist from New York. This list is an argument that lyricism is still very much a part of rap music. As hip-hop's audience has expanded, the rules of what makes a rapper 'lyrical' have broadened as well. It becomes received wisdom, taken as truth: It's 2013, and rappers are gimmicky. 'Rap isn't lyrical any more.' You hear it enough that it becomes an ugly kind of common sense.

Best lyrics of all time rap