Rapper Ranking Project: Rapper #3 - Tupac

Same rules as before.

Previous Scores:

Notorious BIG - 37.5*
Jay-Z - 36.5

Tupac Shakur



Lyrics (5) - Tupac's songs tended to be packed with meaning and messages (good and bad) and he was able to deliver strongly through his words. Very few rappers have been as prolific has him and still manage to deliver strong lyrics in nearly every song.

Delivery (4) - Tupac could ride the beat nicely and demonstrated on numerous occasions that he had the ability to flip different flows to fit a variety of beats and production styles. That said, his flow wasn't quite as dynamic as you may see with some of the top not deliverers. He didn't use many of the other tricks like vocal tone alteration or flow switching that you may hear from the best of the best in this area.

Language (3.5) - Tupac had some capability here, but his lyrics were typically very straight forward. While he always delivered strong lyrics, he didn't necessarily always craft those lyrics in clever ways.

Storytelling (3.5) - Tupac proved that he was a good storyteller with tracks like Brenda's Got a Baby, but stories weren't necessarily his forte. Tupac has a ton of classic songs, but very few of them are stories. He's good but he doesn't measure up against the great storytellers, at least not in body of work.

Catalog (5*) - He's had a ton of work come out since his death. They range for "cobbled together" to "good." I won't really consider that here. Every artist has a ton of tracks they don't release, usually for good reason. We can't really judge Pac on music that he may well have never put out had he not been killed prematurely. Instead this is based on the 5 albums put out (or intended to put out) while he was still alive. 5 is a decent number to judge an artist on and all 5 of his albums are classic or near classic and were successful for when they came out. Even if you don't agree they were all classics, you have to agree that he had classics, and most will probably agree that none of his albums are wack.

Subject Matter (4.5 5) - Tupac was pretty versatile when it came to subjects. While many may he know him for his "Thug this and Thug that" era. If you look at his body of work, he touches on a variety of conscious topics like black on black crime, poverty, police brutality, and racism. Of course, that's balanced out by songs about sex, drugs, money, and violence. It's the dichotomy of Tupac. He still falls short of some artists that literally seem to write songs about any and everything, but he's still strong in this area.

Creativity (3) - Tupac has songs like Me and My Girlfriend that are creative. He was also good at taking concepts and building good songs around them. So he's capable in this area, but again when you look at his body of work, he plays it pretty straight and safe. He made a lot of powerful and meaningful songs, but he didn't really do anything with them to make them unique.

Collaboration (3.5) - He collaborated with a lot of people, but they weren't always the strongest rappers. Alongside them, he stood out. When he was alongside stronger rappers like the Dogg Pound or Red & ? , his verses didn't seem all that impressive. That's not to say he didn't stand out, you just can't find many examples of him merking other dope MCs on a track.

Impact (5*) - Tupac is like the Hip Hop Elvis in the sense that his death catapulted him into a mythical status, so it's difficult to separate his impact as a rapper from the impact caused by his death. Still even when he was alive, he had a larger than life presence. To be fair, that was as much due to his lifestyle and the things he went through as it was to his music. But that music was basically a soundtrack to his life and kinda painted a backdrop for the things he went through. Another thing to note about him is that his popularity was high everywhere. Where some artists are looked at as legends in their hometowns, but are simply just great rappers everywhere else. Tupac was iconic everywhere North, South, East, and West. This is shown in the way so many try to emulate him and be the new Tupac. He didn't break sales records like many others, but his music has stood the test of time and is even studied on college campuses. That's pretty big.

Overall Score - 37 37.5*

*Note - Like with Biggie, his death has affected certain categories for him. However, Pac had a larger body of work before dying than Biggie did and had been around for longer, so it's easier to draw conclusions about him without his death adversely affecting things too much. That said, there are a couple areas where his death and some of the circumstances surrounding his death may have affected the score, so I gotta put a asterisk on this score.

Next Rapper - Nas