We’re not sure if we came up with the idea before or after the recent article from AskMen, but we decided we’d write this anyway. Now, we’re not the BIGGEST fans of rap (or Hip-Hop, as is the parlance of our times,) but the rap the we do like…we LOVE. In doing our research for this article, we saw A LOT of “top ten” and “top 50 Best Rapper” lists to make sure we made the right choices. And although this isn’t a list of the best rappers but rather the most stylish, we saw a lot of bullshit of those lists and a few people that didn’t belong in the top twenty, let alone the top ten.

So we’ve decided to list who we think brought not just skill to the mic but also a sense of style that made them stand out from the field of other attention-grabbing artists, which is tough to do in this genre. And while there are a lot of all time greats who didn’t make this list, we’ll happily concede that there is a lot of overlap between our lists and the best of” lists out there. So, put on your dookie chains and Kangol hats, here we goo…

Grandmaster Flash

LL Cool J

Run-DMC

The Beastie Boys

Afrika Bambaataa

Big Daddy Kane

The Notorious B.I.G.

Mos Def

Puff Daddy

Kanye West

A$AP Rocky

Jay-Z

Common

Andre Benjamin

Talib Kweli

Black Thought