You’ve seen GQ’s pick of the greatest hip-hop albums of all time. You nodded sagely, reading through it, until suddenly, with a deep sense of dread and anger, you realised something seminal, something canonical was missing. You went on Twitter; you argued; you laughed; you cried; you learned. And now, you can do the same thing with our writers' and editors’ picks of the greatest hip-hop songs of all time! Let the debate begin…
A small disclaimer, first: this is not an exhaustive list so much as a curated selection of tracks close to our hearts and that we think are important. So before you go complaining about the lack of “Stan” or “Ether” or “Juicy” or the injustice of leaving off “Fuck The Police”, “Shook Ones Pt II” and “Regulate”, check yourself and take a deep breath. And then give each of these gems – some widely known, some less so – a good listen.
‘Rapper’s Delight’ by The Sugarhill Gang
Dylan Jones, Editor-In-Chief
If disco was a world of fantasy and illusion, hip-hop was a world of bravado and realism. If disco was all about dress codes and sculptured hair, hip-hop was all about the street. If disco was all about upward mobility, then hip-hop was all about downward nobility.
Or at least this was what we thought when we first heard “Rapper’s Delight” by The Sugarhill Gang at the tail end of 1979. However, the whole record was based on disco, almost entirely built on Chic’s “Good Times”. Consequently the record immediately caused controversy because initial pressings didn’t contain any reference to the fact that the bulk of the instrumentation had been written by Chic’s Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards, who promptly called their lawyers.
In the UK, the record had ubiquity immediately. Suddenly it was everywhere – in nightclubs, on the radio, on pub jukeboxes (at least the seven-inch version), in cars. It became the sound of the winter. Everywhere you went you heard “Everybody go hotel, motel, Holiday Inn...”
Even though it was something of a transformative record, a new kind of beat – and the first commercially successful rap record – it possessed the universality of Donna Summer’s “I Feel Love”, Sylvester’s “Mighty Real” or indeed Chic’s “Good Times”. There was something familiar about it, colloquial even, as it referenced Superman, Holiday Inns, even the embarrassment of having to endure your best friend’s mother’s cooking.
And, indeed, disco.
‘Crush On You Remix’ by Lil’ Kim (feat Lil’ Cease)
David Levesley, News And Features Editor, GQ.co.uk
On Lil’ Kim’s 1996 album, Hard Core, she gives “Crush On You” over to male rappers Lil’ Cease and Notorious BIG: a wild decision necessitated by her taking a musical hiatus. It’s a dirty song, from the moment you hear the ripple of that “Rain Dance” sample, but it feels odd – in an album of such feminine sexual autonomy – to hear it entirely performed by dudes. That’s where the remix comes in: Lil’ Kim comes in and turns a good track into a great one, proof that hip-hop was irrevocably improved the moment it stopped being a boys' club. Echoes of this song’s approach to innuendo, femininity and downright nastiness can be heard through most of the music that has followed it, in part because Lil' Kim's lyrics and that coy “True” she repeats on the choruses are undeniably iconic.
‘Reagan’ by Killer Mike
Robert Leedham, Audience Manager, GQ.co.uk
By 2012, hip-hop’s transition from counterculture to the culture was complete. Whether you’re a teen soap opera actor turned mega-selling softboi, proudly gay crooner in an anarchic collective or dominating charts around the globe under the nickname Mr Worldwide, the genre had never been more multiplicitous. Even Sub Pop – the staunchly indie label that was home to Nirvana, Mudhoney and Sleater-Kinney – had signed its first hip-hop act in the deliriously transgressive Shabazz Palaces.
Despite all of this, Killer Mike was not a musician who struggled to be heard. “I don't make dance music, this is RAP / Opposite of the sucker shit they play on TV,” spat the Atlanta native on “Big Beast”, the opening salvo of his incendiary RAP Music LP. It was on “Reagan”, though, where his fire and fury coalesced into something transcendent. Channelling the righteous politics of Public Enemy and riotous controversy of NWA, it remains a stunning riposte to Obama-era politics and the idea that America’s systemic racism would be absolved by the election of its first black president.
From the war on drugs to the war on terror by way of police brutality, the El-P-produced track rifles through aggressions towards Mike’s kin with ferocious precision. Hell, he also manages to burn down the US constitution while he’s at it, “Cos slavery was abolished, unless you are in prison / You think I am bullshitting, then read the 13th Amendment.” Such is his conviction, even the wildest provocations (that Obama intervened in Libya on behalf of Big Oil) carry a visceral weight that’s undeniable.
In an era when white nationalism defines the American psyche and the death of an unarmed black man by law enforcement remains an ever present recurrence, it’s difficult to say that “Reagan” really changed anything. Beyond inspiring Killer Mike and El-P to join forces as the iconoclastic Run The Jewels. Still, that’s the beauty of protest music. You just get to lob hand grenades in the hope that someone will finally clean up the mess. As Mike did with his parting salvo: “I'm dropping off the grid before they pump the lead / I leave you with four words: I'm glad Reagan dead.”
‘Int’l Players Anthem (I Choose You)’ by UGK (feat Outkast)
Thomas Barrie, Features Assistant
The first 75 seconds of UGK and Outkast’s “Int’l Players Anthem” make for one of the most absurd, creative and uplifting verses in hip-hop, as André 3000 floats through an declaration of abiding eternal love for his girl, while name-dropping all the other women he’s been sleeping with in a way that only he could ever really pull off. If you thought it was impossible to be earnest and knowing at the same time, think again. We then drop down into Pimp C and Bun B’s verses, on a beat produced by Three 6 Mafia, featuring a soul sample taken from Willie Hutch’s 1973 single “I Choose You” that would make College Dropout-era Kanye proud. Then back to Big Boi who, in a move opposite to Three Stacks, cuts the sample in favour of the drums and offers, shall we say, a less than enthusiastic take on child support, but a masterful verse nonetheless.
It’s a simple four-verse format over a great beat (with a classic ensemble “last-ditch drama at a wedding” video to boot), but “Intl Players Anthem” also represents three of the American South’s greatest artists collaborating along a Houston-Memphis-Atlanta axis. And that’s before taking into account the importance each of them had in breaking the New York-California mainstream duopoly that persisted in the 1980s and early 1990s. Would Migos, 2Chainz or Young Thug ever have reached the same level of success if UGK and Outkast hadn’t established Southern hip-hop as a serious force? Would we have mumble rap at all? Would Megan Thee Stallion, Houston native, be at No1 in the States at time of writing? Would Donald Glover have made Atlanta? Well, perhaps. Whatever the case, six months after the song’s release, Pimp C would be found dead in his hotel room and Outkast would essentially go on hiatus for seven years – but the Southern hip-hop renaissance we’re blessed with now was well underway.
‘Ni**as in Paris' by Jay-Z and Kanye West
Charlie Burton, Senior Commissioning Editor
There was a time when I played this track on repeat so often I began to wonder if there was something wrong with me. Then I went to see Jay-Z and Kanye West perform it as part of their juggernaut Watch The Throne tour when it arrived at London’s O2 Arena in May 2012. Come the end of the epic, 150-minute concert – the hip-hop equivalent of watching the Stones and The Beatles playing together at the height of their powers – the duo performed that song right up to Kanye’s very-Kanye line “And they going gorillas, huh”. Then they rewound the whole thing and began again from the start, before doing it a third time and a fourth. The O2 is a huge room, but the energy made it feel as intimate as the Brixton Academy and it only intensified with each repeat. To quote the Throne, the crowd went HAM.
Why? Because “Ni**as In Paris” is an unbridledly gleeful song; it’s about Jay and Ye surmounting adversity, making the big time and how you’re damn right they’re going to celebrate it. It’s set to an irresistible beat that drives forwards like it’s always just on the cusp of tripping over itself and in keeping with the spirit of the thing it doesn’t take itself too seriously. It’s full of wit and whimsy – hell, at one point the music cuts away completely to a sample of Will Ferrell in Blades Of Glory just to make a joke at the lyrics’ own expense. This pair of musicians have more than earned the right to make a song so ridiculous and so triumphant and hearing them perform it is life affirming. If you’re aren’t playing it on repeat, frankly, there’s something wrong with you.
'Still DRE' by Dr Dre (feat Snoop Dogg)
Kathleen Johnston, Social Content Editor, GQ.co.uk
When I think of hip hop, I think of "Still DRE". It's been more than 20 years since its release – "Still DRE" was the lead single on Dre’s 1999 sophomore album 2000 – but, like any genuine classic, it just keeps getting better with age. That piano sample… phewf! You can feel the excitement rising from the moment the intro kicks in, Snoop Dogg's laidback flow on the hook providing the perfect counterpoint to Dre's more aggressive, gruffer delivery.
Admit it, you feel compelled to rap along, don't you? I for one cannot remember the last time I went to a club night promising rap, R&B and old school favourites and the DJ hasn't played it (although, in fairness, there haven't been any of those for a while). It's the centrepiece of any good 1990s and 2000s set – catnip for millennials such as me who want to spend their Friday nights listening to the same songs we've been playing since school – hence why you're guaranteed to hear it at White City, Shoreditch or Soho House at some point after 9pm on any given night. Fun fact: Jay-Z actually wrote all the lyrics for the track, which, back in 1999, served as proof that, seven years on from his smash-hit debut, The Chronic, Dre still had it. Today, it's confirmation he always will.
‘Devil In A New Dress’ by Kanye West
Ben Allen, Online Production Coordinator, GQ.co.uk
It’s nigh on impossible to be an unapologetic Kanye West fan these days, but over the years I’ve spent far too many hours defending him to nonbelievers at the pub to give up now, even after some stuff I really can’t defend (the Maga hat in particular). One hill I am willing to die on is that “Devil In A New Dress” is the greatest hip-hop song of all time.
Originally released as a three-minute track as part of his Good Fridays project in 2009 – a glorious era when he dropped a new banger every Friday – and later bulked out to its current form on his opus My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. It’s got everything that made Kanye great: the chopped and pitched-up soul sample (Smokey Robinson’s “Will You Love Me Tomorrow”), the guest verse from a rapper spitting bars like they’ve never done before (Rick Ross) and the serene production that lifts everything to a higher plane.
Lyrically, it’s one of his most playful songs, too, as he looks back on a relationship that went awry: “How she gon' wake up and not love me no more? / I thought I was the asshole, I guess it's rubbing off.” The best part of the song, though, arguably, is its long, jazzy interlude, in which Ye’s engineer, Mike Dean, drops in a tasty guitar solo right before Ross bursts in with his verse like a rabid dog let off the leash.
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