Rap Kumite 5
Eminem vs. Kendrick Lamar. Rap Kumite 5.
Kung-Fu Kenny brings his fists of fury to a dank basement in Detroit to battle Slim Shady.
I took my 20 favorite rappers and put them in head-to-head matchups to battle for their rank in Rap Kumite.
We’ve arrived at the halfway point of this tournament, but not without some controversial decisions. A few people hit me up after reading the first drop, RK10: Evidence vs. Slug, letting me know I made the wrong call with innocuous texts that read, “Gotta go with Slug on this one,” and “Ev is nice but Slug Atmosphere are better.” The next matchup, RK9: GZA vs. Aesop Rock, had the same folks wondering how I figured those two rappers were in the same class. For sure, the overwhelming weight of the Wu-Tang Clan’s catalog and cultural influence on hip-hop would have blown apart Aes Rock’s little indie-hop kingdom, but when I parsed it down to GZA’s solo work and threw his 10 best tracks against Aesop Rock’s, the underground underdog stood a chance.
The track-to-track matchup has played a significant role in determining the outcome of each “Rap Kumite”. For every article, I create a playlist to publish with it. I curate each playlist, stuffing it with my favorite tracks from each competing artist—the songs that first come to mind when I run through their catalogs. I keep the playlist on heavy rotation for the week while I write/edit/re-write and publish the article, and I make “cuts” throughout that week to get the total number of tracks down to 20 (10 for each artist) before I publish them. It’s a method, but it’s not scientific. It’s not supposed to be. This is an exercise in emotion. The question I ask myself when I listening to these songs is, “How does the music make me feel?” Answering this question is what’s lead to unexpected decisions in the matchups between Pusha-T and Freddie Gibbs, DMX and E-40, and this last one between 2Pac and Nipsey Hussle. Going into those matchups, I figured I would settle on Freddie Gibbs, E-40, and 2Pac, but I surprised myself.
Depending on your take, the “Rap Kumite 5” matchup could seem lopsided. In terms of albums sold, with streaming taken into consideration, it’s no contest. Eminem has sold around 4 times as many as Kendrick Lamar, but he’s been doing it for twice as long as Kung-Fu Kenny. He also broke out at a key moment in rap history, capturing everyone’s attention, and he crushed it. He was exactly what MTV needed back when that network played music videos and still moved the needle in teen pop-culture. The gap closes significantly between Eminem and Kendrick if we measure them in terms of acclaim. Both rappers are critical darlings and have won loads of awards from Grammys to an Oscar (Eminem), and a damn Pulitzer Prize (Kendrick Lamar). They are considered to be among the best rappers ever, a statement that is hard to argue when you listen to their music. They have similar styles in that they tend to stuff bars with syllables, and they are not afraid to experiment with their sound and delivery.
On paper, Eminem vs. Kendrick Lamar seemed like a close matchup.
Eminem
“I’m like a head trip to listen to, ‘ cause I’m only givin’ you. Things you joke about with your friends inside your livin’ room. The only difference is I got the balls to say it in front of ya’ll. And I don’t gotta be false or sugarcoat it at all.”
Jay-Z is a billionaire. Everything Drake has touched in the last 12 years has turned platinum. Snoop Dogg is in commercials for Corona and doing network TV shows with Kevin Hart. Kendrick Lamar is winning academic awards for music composition, elevating our listening experience, yet Eminem is the best-selling rapper in the history of the genre. 200+ million albums sold and still counting as he shifts into mid-life. I mentioned earlier that he happened to break out at an opportune time, and (without a shred of actual researched evidence) I believe this helped catapult him into superstardom pretty much overnight. There was a void in hip-hop after 2Pac and Biggie had been killed. There weren’t any superstars in the game. The shine hadn’t come off Nas yet, but he hadn’t captured people’s attention on the same scale as Biggie and Pac. Jay-Z was still ascending and wouldn’t hit pop-culture status until he linked up with Beyoncé. DMX had just hit the scene. OutKast wasn’t getting any respect, and the Wu-Tang Clan were too niche to become the dominant global force they lauded themselves to be. But as soon as Eminem’s “My Name Is” video hit MTV and went into heavy rotation, it was a wrap. He was a superstar; he was a novelty unlike his white rapping predecessors. This dude could actually spit, and what he said was absolutely bonkers. It was something completely different in rap when the market was up for grabs, and he was co-signed by Dr. Dre. Boom.
If, 8 Mile had just been a movie about a blue-collar white guy from Detroit who wanted to become a rapper, it would have probably been made as a tongue-in-cheek comedy instead of a drama. Who in the audience, besides young suburban white guys who ate up rap music, would have been able to take “Bunny Rabbit” seriously? (I was one of those suburban white guys back in 2002; still white and suburban, just not young anymore). As it turned out, 8 Mile was more or less a memoir about Eminem’s rise through the Detroit underground rap scene in the early/mid-90s. The Slim Shady LP dropped in 1999, certified platinum within months; The Marshall Mathers LP dropped a year later and broke all kinds of sales records its first week. I was a senior in high school, and I remember seeing a kid in the junior class run down the hallway bay where my locker was, and he was holding up a copy of that Marshall Mathers CD for all his peers to see, and he was proclaiming it to be “EMINEM DAY!”. Shit was wild. By the time 8 Mile came out, Eminem had released three albums and sold around 20 million copies of them, combined. That’s got to be one of the best 3-year-runs of sales for any solo artist. Hall of Fame numbers right from the start, and although his work after that run never quite met critics expectations (or it did and they were over Eminem), he’s managed to sell around half of those 200+ million albums in the last decade. He’s a monster. He’s the real Slim Shady, and he’s one hell of an opponent.
Favorite Track
“Kill You” and “Cleanin’ Out My Closet” were in consideration for this spot, but I gave it to the one track I feel best defines Eminem as the world came to know him.
Eminem is the hip-hop Tarantino; he creates albums that are gratuitous with violence and other debauchery, that are excessive with vulgar language, and that often make light of awful circumstances and situations. “The Real Slim Shady” is Em’s Pulp Fiction.
Kendrick Lamar onstage, Dallas (2022). Photo by Greg Noire.
Kendrick Lamar
“I’m tryna keep it alive and not compromise the feelin’ we love. You’re tryna keep it deprived and only co-sign what radio does. And I’m lookin’ right past ya.”
Kendrick Lamar has been keeping that vibe alive since he snatched our attention with his magnificent major label debut, good kid, m.A.A.d. city. He told us that he wouldn’t compromise the “feelin’ we love”, certifying that he would stay true to his heart and his vision and not make some bullshit just for radio play. Where a lot of his contemporaries structure their albums to sound more like a playlist of their own music, Kendrick Lamar composes albums that live and breathe. It’s high art rap music that explores different situations, often the hard circumstances of growing up in Compton but not limited to that. He raps about mental health; he raps about social and political issues; he raps over jazz, funk, and soul. He’s got tracks that slap and fit right in on your gym playlist, and he has music that inspires critical thinking.
He reminds me of Nas if Nas had leaned into the vibe he created on Illmatic instead of chasing the money and fame by making an album with some radio-friendly hits and the sole purpose of being a commercial success. Kendrick is the street scribe, pontificating on all things unfolding around him. Nah, he’s more than that. He’s broadened his scope beyond Compton, reaching across the Atlantic into African roots and traditions in music and rhythm and speech, turning inward to reflect on his own life and the lives of his people around him. To Pimp a Butterfly is a sonic masterpiece, similar to good kid, m.A.A.d. city in that it sounds nothing like the album he made before it. His approach to making albums is reminiscent of OutKast; they made something different every time they made an album. No two sounded alike, yet they all sounded authentically OutKast. Kendrick Lamar brings that same vibe to his work.
Favorite Track
It’s going to come as no surprise that I settled on this one, but it was hard to separate from “Alright” and “DNA” and “Money Trees”. “Count Me Out” has become one of my new favorites from K. Dot, but I tend to fall back on the familiar.
It’s a comfort song and a rally cry for everyone to stay true to their vision and themselves. Don’t compromise either, stay on the grind, and things will work out. Oh, yeah, and you also have to be a world-class talent, like Kendrick Lamar.
There can only be ONE!
This is Rap Kumite 5, reserved for the 5th spot in my “Top 10”. Styles matter in fighting and in hip-hop. Vibe matters. Eminem is an all-timer, a living legend, and probably the biggest solo-artist of his generation. Kendrick Lamar is a phenom whose albums have set new standards for creativity in hip-hop and prove that an evolution of style doesn’t mean a dilution of quality. The battle between them was hard fought, but in the end, it wasn’t all that close.
Kendrick Lamar
Spending a lot of time listening to my favorite tracks from each of these artists, I realized how much more I dig Kendrick Lamar. His music hits different. When both rappers are as technically superior as Eminem and Kendrick Lamar, I have to go with how that shit makes me feel. Do you remember me saying this around 1,500 words ago, in the intro?
K. Dot for the win in Rap Kumite 5.
Congratulations! The prize is a special place in my heart.
RAP KUMITE CHAMPS
10. Evidence
09. GZA
08. Pusha-T
07. DMX
06. Nipsey Hussle
05. Kendrick Lamar
Next in Rap Kumite 4, two of Staten Island’s finest battle it out Shaolin Style for the 4th Chamber.
Previously in Rap Kumite 6...
