When distilled through the mind of someone who’s already doing it, the answer to the question “Who’s the best?” takes on a much deeper meaning.

Godemis is one of those emcees that you could already call “a rapper’s rapper,” possessing all the tools you could ask for when spitting on the mic: Delivery? Check. Wordplay? Check. Flow? Double-check. These traits are all on steroids when one listens to his verses on CES Cru’s debut Strange Music album Constant Energy Struggles.

So we sat down and asked the maniacal half of CES Cru who he thought were the best lyricists of all time.

Here’s what he had to say.

Elzhi

For my ear anyway, he’s got super unorthodox patterns. I never know which word he’s going to rhyme with. Even when I do know what word he’s going to rhyme with I don’t know where he’s going to drop it. It’s weird, he stretches shit out. Elzhi raps real weird and I think he’s one of the best out of Detroit. Like that. Yeah.

Eminem

Dude. There’s so many things to say about Eminem. Eminem is to hip hop what Tiger Woods is to golf. He fucked the game up. Beyond Eminem having a full spectrum of all the hardware that an emcee is supposed to have, your delivery, your wordplay, your metaphors and all that shit and your similes, beyond him having all that, when he came in the game, he changed the game. Even for better or for worse: him badmouthing his mom, like all the drug culture that he got into the game that NObody was fucking talking about, that had been going on. It wasn’t nothing new it was just that Eminem brought it to hip hop, so that was really fucking cool. So, I like him.

Andre 3000

He manages to have a gorilla presence without having to drop albums or mixtapes or anything like that and he just murders guest spots and my favorite thing about Andre 3K is that early, early early on in the game he was able to see through all the bullshit and really find himself. I feel like he did that on ATLiens and ever since then it’s been him and throughout all the criticism and all the fucking shit like that he continues to have paramount lyrics and a gorilla presence on any fucking song he’s on. He fucking kills the guest spot and nobody’s rapping like 3000.

Kutty Slitz

Kutty Slitz is the tightest rapper you never fucking heard. The guy’ll write a song about any and everything. Same thing I said about Eminem: he’s got all the gear you need, all your delivery, your metaphors, all that shit that people always rave about – he’s got all that and then some other shit. My favorite thing about Kutty Slitz is that he’s liable to write some shit that you wouldn’t particularly think he was going to write about and then it might not even be a hip hop song, it might be a rock song or it might be his version of some sort of like negro spiritual or whatever it is he decides to write at the time and he writes that shit like he’s been doing it, like he deserves to do it and yeah, he’s the best at it that you’ll never fucking hear. He’s great.

Tech N9ne

Tech N9ne? Aw where do I start? So many styles. Never know what Tech N9ne’s going to say. Never know how he’s going to say it and a lot of the time the shit blows by at lightning speed and so first you gotta catch it, then you gotta catch it. You see what I’m saying? First you gotta hear it and then once you hear it you gotta like find whatever it is he’s referencing from or what he pulled that from. Yeah, he’s probably got the most styles out of all the rappers I’m familar with. He’s got the most styles, is the most whimsical, is liable to take it, push it any direction as far as you can imagine.

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• Which one of these emcees is your favorite

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