american and italian rap are two distinct worlds, divided by a bold line.
although italian rap differs in style and flow, it was inflenced by some good vibes from the us, that don't deserve to be forgiven.
a plethora of reminiscences, citations and sound samples are the base of the first wave of italian rap.

a list first: remember these names. here are some notable rappers with their distinctive flow:

- gza
- ll cool j (ladies love cool james)
- slick rick
- redman
- scarface
- ice cube
- jay-z
- nas
- big daddy kane
- krs one
- rakim
- beanie siegel
- busta rhymes
- method man
- canibus.

here are some 1st-gen never-live-without rappers, and some of their greatest songs:

- snoop doggy dogg
--- Gin and Juice
--- Who Am I? (What's My Name)
--- Murder Was The Case
--- Doggy Dogg World

- scarface
--- In Cold Blood
--- My Block
--- Someday
--- In Between Us

- dr dre
--- Stranded On Death Row
--- Nuthin' But A G Thang
--- Still Dre

- jay z
--- Dead Presidents II
--- Can't Knock The Hustle
--- Regrets
--- 22 Two's

- wu tang clan
--- C.R.E.A.M. (cash rules everything around me)
--- Protect Ya Neck
--- Can It Be All So Simple

- notorious big
--- Top Tracks Juicy
--- Big Poppa
--- Ready To Die
--- Unbelievable

- public enemy
--- Rebel Without A Pause
--- Don't Believe The Hype
--- Black Steel In The Hour of Chaos
--- Night of The Living Baseheads

- nas
--- Halftime
--- It Ain't Hard To Tell
--- The World Is Yours
--- New York State of Mind
--- Memory Lane

- tribe called quest
--- Scenario ft Busta Rhymes
--- Verses from The Abstract
--- Buggin' Out
--- Check The Rhime

- 2pac
--- Dear Mama
--- Lord Knows
--- Me Against The World
--- So Many Tearz

Speaking about metrics, sometimes you hear lyrical missteps that make your favorite rappers wish they could go back in time and rewrite their rhymes.

25. "Verse number 2 do the damn thang keeps on my neck pocket's full of Ben Franks."
Yung Joc, "It's Goin' Down."
Album: New Joc City
A classic case of saying... absolutely nothing.

24. "There's no need to lie folk, Why you sleepin' wit ya eyes closed?"
Timbaland, "Get on the Bus"
Album: Why Do Fools Fall in Love (Soundtrack)
Well, Tim, if I had to endure your mediocre rhymes all the time I'd definitely sleep with my eyes, ears, and nose closed as well.

23. "I can double my density from three-sixty degrees to seven-twenty instantly."
Canibus, "Funk Master Flex Freestyle"
Obviously, Canibus slept through 10th grade when they went over units of measurement.

22. "Thirty-eight revolve like the sun round the Earth."
Jay-Z, "It's Hot"
Album: Volume 3: Life and Times of S.Carter
And, Jay-Z skipped his Geography class.

21. "N****s in the Bronx call me Lex cause I push a Lex, and I rock a Rolex and I lounge on Lex', and I love sex."
Peter Gunz, "Deja Vu: Uptown Baby"
Album: Make It Reign
What are the odds that Cory Gunz ghostwrote this for his dad at age 9?

20. "Never let me slip, cause if I slip, then I'm slippin."
Dr. Dre, "Nuthin' But a 'G' Thang"
Album: The Chronic
Aren't we glad that he eventually decided to hire some ghostwriters?

19. "When it's hot I'm duckin' them people with my firearm Look I be straight thuggin."
Turk, "Trife Livin"
Album: Young and Thuggin'
If he's the one with the firearm, why's he duckin'?

18. "My paragraph alone is worth five mics (uh-huh) A twelve song LP, that's thirty-six mics (uh-huh)..."
Redman "5 Boroughs"
Album: The Corruptor Soundtrack
Apparently, Redman's calculator is miles ahead of the game.

17. "Don't try to treat me like I ain't famous My apologies, are you into astrology Cause I'm, I'm tryin to make it to Uranus..."
Kanye West, "Gettin' It In"
Album: Kiss of Death
Oh I get it: there's Libra, Sagittarius, Scorpio, and then Uranus. And you say Kanye doesn't deserve to have his image displayed next to the word 'genius' in Webster's Dictionary?

16. "Hood n***a from Bankhead, I stay by Grandma Nana I lay by my banana, dumpin' and punkin' monkeys."
Young Dro, "Shoulder Lean"
With all the money T.I. makes from music and movies, you'd think he would at least invest in a decent ghostwriter for his sidekick.

15. "When you take a sip you buzz like a hornet Billy Shakespeare wrote a whole bunch of sonnets."
LFO, "Summer Girls"
Cut them some slack. These guys graduated from the prestigious Vanilla Ice Institute of Hip-Hop and decided to try their hands at random word association.

14. "Sometime y'all get crimey crimey, grimy grimy But those with a tiny hiney they get whiny whiny."
Cam'Ron, "5 Boroughs"
Album: The Corruptor Soundtrack
Someone should have informed Cam that this choppy choppy rhyme thing is silly silly.

13. "I'm hungry for cheese like Hungry, Hungry Hippo."
Project Pat ("Ballers")
Album: Ghetty Green
Extra points for giving us one of the worst songs ever known to man.

12. "If you don't bring back my m****f*****n money or my m***f****n dope, you can forget about Christmas n***a, cause you ain't gon even see New Years."
Master P ("Do You Know")
In Master P's universe, New Year comes right before Christmas.

11. "It's like fee, fie, foe, fum, I smell the blood of a jealous a*s punk."
Prodigy ("Click Clack")
Album: Blood Money
No longer inspired by hardcore hip-hop, Prodigy turns to nursery rhymes for some equally uninspiring lyrics.


10. "First family will gradually lift that a*s up like gravity."
Lil' Fame (of M.O.P.) ("Half and Half")
Sire Isaac Newton must be turning in his grave right now.

9. "I like the way ya ass move to the beat You a freak, that's somethin' you can be."
J-Kwon ("Show Your A**")
Album: Hood Hop
You see, kids, that's another reason why you should stay in school.

8. "D.D.T. the b**ch, I can go for some hours. Let Parlae hit, together we like twin towers."
Pimpin ("Freaky as She Wanna Be")
Album: On Top of Our Game
A terribly humorless and tasteless joke. Enough said.

7. "I like them black, white, Puerto Rican, or Haitian Like Japanese, Chinese, or even Asian."
Chingy ("Balla Baby")
Album: Powerballin'
As far as Chingy's concerned, Asian is a nationality damnit.

6. "I'll break it down for you now, baby it's simple If you be a nympho, I'll be a nympho."
50 Cent ("Candy Shop")
Album: The Massacre
Well, what do you expect from an artist whose stage moniker in itself constitutes a grammatical mishap?

5. "Thirty-two grams raw, chop it in half, get sixteen, double it times three. We got forty-eight, which mean a whole lot of cream Divide the profit by four, subtract it by eight We back to sixteen..."
Foxy Brown ("Affirmative Action")
Album: It Was Written
This holds the world record for worst mathematics on a song.

4. "Got a Bill in my mouth like I'm Hillary Rodham."
Ali G (Grillz)
Album: Sweat/Suit
No comments.

3. "Young, black, and famous, with money hanging out the anus."
Mase ("Can't Nobody Hold Me Down")
Album: No Way Out
Now, that's the type of money I definitely wouldn't want to touch before breakfast.

2. "I watch my back when I'm walkin, I watch my mouth when I'm talking. My glock cocked when I'm crawling."
Mike Jones ("Scandalous H**s")
Album: Who is MIke Jones?
What's next? I watch my ears when I'm hearing, I watch my sight when I'm seeing?

1. "Now you know that I'm the Queen of Miami. All that loud talkin, lyin, save that sh*t for your mammy. Sounds like "blah, blah blah, blah bla blah-blah," I'm like uh-huh (uh-huh) okay (okay), Whassup (whassup) SHUT UP!"
Trina ("Here We Go")
Album: Glamorest Life
Actual lyrics.

What follows is a list of ten rap songs that will either tug at your heartstrings or cause you to reminisce this Valentine's Day (that's good for making ladies appreciate rap!).

10. A Tribe Called Quest - "Bonita Applebum"
"Bonita Applebum" finds ATCQ romanticizing a calm, thumping drumbeat. With his nasal flow and soothing delivery, Q-Tip spills poetic excerpts, masterfully pausing between lines for ardor.

9. Jay-Z - "Song Cry"
Just when you thought Hov was all about money, cash, h*s (he actually is), he pulls out his storytelling hat and struts a classic rap love song. Although Jay's defiant persona is alive here (instead of shedding the tears himself, he makes the song cry), he's sentimental enough to concede being called "ugly" by the gold-digging female in this story.

8. DJ Honda feat. Mos Def - "Travellin' Man"
DJ Honda dismantles a gritty sonic template and rebuilds it with funky jazz fragments. The result is a lush mix of harmonic samples and a cool street hip-hop drum track. Mos takes advantage of the shimmering production, as he seamlessly seesaws between rapping and singing about this journey called life.

7. Bone Thugs-N-Harmony - "Tha Crossroads"
Following Eazy-E's demise in March of 1995, his disciples Bone Thugs-N-Harmony unleashed this moody masterpiece in honor of the late west coast vet and other fallen soldiers.

6. De La Soul - "Eye Know"
This jazzyfied hip-hop crew was the first to rhyme about daisies and dames and make it sound, oh so sweet. De La's candy-coated musings over lush soulful samples (notably from Otis Redding's "(Sittin' on) the Dock of the Bay") made it trendy to declare sweet affection for that "special person" without losing credibility.

5. Ghostface feat. Mary J. Blige - "All That I Got Is You"
Ditching the conventional 32-bar structure for a long-running verse, Ghost drops genuinely emotional lyrics about crashing in a congested apartment with his mom and plucking roaches out of cereal boxes. No hard-hitting drums, no anti-swine-eating vignettes. Just Mary J. Blige's tear-jerk crooning and GFK's emotion-laden words.

4. 2 Pac - "Dear Mama"
Pac made it cool for rappers to glorify their moms in the 90s, as he pats mama on the back for attempting to liberate him from the perils of street life. Shakur's soulful lyrics make "Dear Mama" a sentimental hip-hop masterpiece.

3. PM Dawn - "Set Adrift on Memory Bliss"
Set atop a soundbed of Spandau Ballet's "True" and Eric B & Rakim's "Paid in Full," PM Dawn dreams up a world that is both reflective and sentimental. Ultimately, "Set Adrift on Memory Bliss" is about releasing old attachments and reliving them in one's memory.

2. LL Cool J - "I Need Love"
This 1987 smash, often heralded as the first true hip-hop love song, is a reminder that Cool J has been swinging the "L" to the ladies for decades.

1. Pete Rock and CL Smooth - "They Reminisce Over You [T.R.O.Y.]"
Insane horn riffs. Shimmering cymbals. Soulful samples. You just know it's Pete Rock's unmistakable craftsmanship. On the other end, C.L. Smooth channels controlled emotion through the mic on this funeral favorite. Even though C.L. swears he's "noddin' off, sleep to a jazz tune," this is melancholy elegy at its finest.

Here are a Top Fifty Rap and R&B Collaborations (also useful for girls who don't like arshness, dissings and ghetto stories):

50 - I Can't Wait - OutKast ft. Sleepy Brown
49 - I Like That - Houston ft. I-20, Nate Dogg Chingy
48 - Addictive - Truth Hurts ft. Rakim
47 - Fast Lane - Bilal ft. Jadakiss and Dr. Dre
46 - Karma - Lloyd Banks ft. Avant
45 - Thugz Mansion - 2Pac ft. Anthony Hamilton
44 - Ghetto Supastar - Pras Michel ft. Ol' Dirty Bastard and Mya
43 - Sincerity - Mary J. Blige ft. DMX and Nas
42 - Locked Up (remix) - Akon ft. Styles P.
41 - Deja vu - Beyonce ft. Jay-Z

40 - The Best of Me (Remix) - Jay-Z & Mya
39 - How Do You Want It - 2Pac & K-Ci & Jojo
38 - Still Not A Player - Big Pun & Joe
37 - Body Kiss - The Isley Bros. ft. Lil' Kim
36 - We Ride - R.Kelly, Cam'ron, Jay-Z, Vegas Cats, & Nore
35 - I Don't Wanna Know - Mario Winans ft. Diddy
34 - Hey Lover - Boyz II Men & LL Cool J
33 - Just Right - Ryan Leslie ft. Snoop Dogg
32 - Start from Scratch - The Game & Marsha (of Floetry)
31 - I Can Change - John Legend ft. Snoop Dogg

30 - Gold Digger - Kanye West & Jamie Foxx
29 - Pocketbook (Remix) - Me'Shell Ndegeocello ft. Redman
28 - Street Dreams - Nas & R.Kelly
27 - What These B****es Want - DMX ft. Sisqo
26 - Fiesta (Remix) - R.Kelly & Jay-Z
25 - I've Changed - LL Cool J ft. Ryan Toby
24 - The Streets of New York - Rakim, Nas, & Alicia Keys
23 - We Need a Resolution - Aaliyah ft. Timbaland
22 - Break Up to Make Up - Method Man & D'Angelo
21 - Oh - Ciara ft. Ludacris

20 - Been Through the Storm - Busta Rhymes ft. Stevie Wonder
19 - Got It (Remix) - Goapele ft. E-40
18 - Breakdown - Bone Thugs-N-Harmony & Mariah Carey
17 - High Post Brotha - Jill Scott ft. Common
16 - One More Chance (Remix) - The Notorious B.I.G. & Faith Evans
15 - The Seed (2.0) - The Roots ft. Cody ChesnuTT
14 - Why - Jadakiss & Anthony Hamilton
13 - The Way You Move - OutKast ft. Sleepy Brown
12 - Can't Knock The Hustle - Jay-Z & Mary J. Blige
11 - Break You Off - The Roots ft. Musiq

10 - All That I Got Is You - Ghostface & Mary J. Blige
9 - Can't Deny It - Fabolous ft. Nate Dogg
8 - I'll Be Missing U - Puff Daddy, Faith Evans, & 112
7 - Fantasy (Remix) - Mariah Carey ft. Ol'Dirty Bastard
6 - You Got Me - The Roots & Erykah Badu & Eve
5 - Home Alone - R. Kelly ft. Keith Murray
4 - If I Ruled the World (Imagine That) - Nas ft. Lauryn Hill
3 - Let's Get Down - Tony Toni Tone ft. DJ Quik
2 - No Diggity - BLACKstreet ft. Dr. Dre and Queen Pen
1 - I'll Be There For You/You're All I Need To Get By - Method Man & Mary J. Blige

And finally a list of one hundred of the best rap songs ever:

100 - Da Brat - Funkdafied
99 - The Roots - What They Do
98 - Common - The Light
97 - Smif-N-Wessun - Bucktown
96 - Junior M.A.F.I.A. - Player's Anthem
95 - Das EFX - They Want EFX
94 - Coolio - Gangsta's Paradise
93 - ODB - Brooklyn Zoo
92 - Killer Mike - That's Life
91 - The Notorious B.I.G. - Who Shot Ya

90 - Method Man ft. Mary J Blige - All I Need
89 - GZA - Fame
88 - What U See Is What U Get - Xzibit
87 - Ghostface ft. Mary J Blige - All That I Got Is You
86 - Ultramagnetic MC's - Ego Trippin'
85 - The Fugees - Fu-gee-La
84 - The Luniz - I Got 5 On It
83 - Akrobatik - Remind My Soul
82 - M.O.P. - How About Some Hardcore
81 - Ice Cube - It Was A Good Day

80 - Wu-Tang Clan - Protect Ya Neck
79 - Cypress Hill - How I Could Just Kill A Man
78 - The Game - Dreams - Listen
77 - Big Pun - Still Not A Player
76 - LL Cool J - Mama Said Knock You Out
75 - Biz Markie - Nobody Beats The Biz
74 - Nas - New York State of Mind
73 - Fabolous - Breathe
72 - Lupe Fiasco - Kick, Push
71 - Big L - Ebonics

70 - DJ Jazzy Jeff & Fresh Prince - Parents Just Don't Understand
69 - Snoop Dogg - Gin and Juice
68 - Common - The 6th Sense
67 - Jay-Z ft. Mary J Blige - Can't Knock The Hustle
66 - Lauryn Hill - Everything Is Everything
65 - Mos Def - Umi Says
64 - Jadakiss - Why
63 - 50 Cent - Many Men (Wish Death)
62 - UGK feat. OutKast - Int'l Players Anthem (I Choose You)
61 - Slum Village - Reunion

60 - Big Daddy Kane - Raw
59 - Special Ed - I Got It Made
58 - Eminem - Mosh
57 - DJ Quik - Tonite
56 - Black Moon - Who Got da Props
55 - Naughty By Nature - OPP
54 - Nas - One Mic
53 - A Tribe Called Quest - Electric Relaxation
52 - UGK - Ridin' Dirty
51 - Artifacts - Wrong Side of da Tracks

50 - Marley Marl - The Symphony
49 - Aasim - Hip-Hop 101
48 - Run-DMC & Aerosmith - Walk This Way
47 - Salt-N-Pepa - Push It
46 - Zion I feat Talib Kweli - Temperature
45 - Eminem - Stan
44 - Slick Rick - Children's Story
43 - Kanye West - Jesus Walks
42 - M.O.P. - Ante Up (Remix)
41 - OutKast - Ms Jackson

40 - Scarface - I Seen A Man Die
39 - O.C. - Time's Up
38 - Craig Mack - Flava In Ya Ear (Remix)
37 - DMX - Slippin'
36 - Bone Thugs-N-Harmony - Tha Crossroads
35 - Kool G Rap & DJ Polo - Ill Street Blues
34 - GangStarr ft. Nice & Smooth - Dwyck
33 - Warren G - Regulate
32 - Slick Rick & Doug E Fresh - La di da di
31 - Westside Connection - Bow Down

30 - Mos Def - Mathematics
29 - Brand Nubian - Slow Down
28 - Big Daddy Kane - Ain't No Half Steppin'
27 - Mobb Deep - Shook Ones II
26 - Kurtis Blow - The Breaks
25 - Talib Kweli - Get By
24 - Beastie Boys - Paul Revere
23 - MC Lyte - Paper Thin
22 - The Pharcyde - Passin' Me By
21 - dead prez - It's Bigger Than Hip-Hop

20 - Wu-Tang Clan - C.R.E.A.M.
19 - N.W.A. - Straight Outta Compton
18 - Geto Boys - Mind Playin' Tricks on Me
17 - A Tribe Called Quest ft. Busta Rhymes - Scenario
16 - Jay-Z - Dead Presidents II
15 - The Notorious B.I.G. - Juicy
14 - Dr. Dre & Snoop Dogg - Nuthin' But a 'G' Thang
13 - LL Cool J - I Need Love
12 - Boogie Down Productions - My Philosophy
11 - 2Pac - Keep Ya Head Up

10 - Afrika Bambataa - Planet Rock
9 - Public Enemy - Fight The Power
8 - Audio Two - Top Billin'
7 - Nas - The World Is Yours
6 - Pete Rock & CL Smooth - They Reminisce Over You
5 - Eric B & Rakim - Lyrics of Fury
4 - 2Pac - Dear Mama
3 - Grandmaster Flash & The Furious 5 - The Message
2 - The Sugarhill Gang - Rapper's Delight
1 - Common Sense - I Used To Love H.E.R.