You must be either joking or ######ed. I'm going to guess joking, because I don't want to think I'm sitting at a keyboard and arguing with Life Goes On.
Probably my fav of all time would be Maestro Fresh-Wes (very underated IMO, had some dope stuff from the late 80's/early 90's aswell).
Rakim for sure would be up there, maybe even would top my list when I really think about it. Others I'd add: Guru. Kool G Rap, Gza/The Genius, LL in his early days was solid.
I'll end this post with some stuff from Maestro (he's canadian too!).
The Following User Says Thank You to BlAcKNoVa For This Useful Post:
They were so effing good I had real hope rap would start to do something originel again when they came out, instead they broke up and we got saddled with Black Eyed Peas.
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I changed the thread title to the subject hip hop in general since people are starting to post music in the thread and such. It was mainly meant to be a discussion type thread but posting music in it is not a bad idea. Here's some Eminem from back in the day: