One of Grandmaster Flash’s Furious Five looks deeply hurt by the Billboard’s recent ranking of the 50 Greatest Rappers of All Time. Melle Mel has never been welcoming to new rappers, but now his grumbling has reached new heights.
The Art Of Dialogue podcast releases new snippets from a big interview recorded with Melle Mel. Every new bit shows a new page from the list of his endless complaints about the current music scene and hip hop culture. Discussing Kendrick Lamar’s second place on that said ranking Melle Mel strongly disagreed with the pick. His main arguments are: Kendrick is too young and he has not inspired anybody to follow his rap style. The second point is very similar to what Melle Mel reprehends Marshall about:
Is Kendrick Lamar being number two? I don’t know. Obviously, he made some good songs but these songs don’t translate to the street part of hip hop. It’s like another level of hip hop. I don’t know what records that he made like that, I just know one or two of them but I don’t think you can hear Kendrick in the club like that. I mean, there might be his records that I don’t know, you know, I’m 90 years old. But it does not translate him to being the number two of the greatest rapper of all time. Has does that happen? It shouldn’t. Because he’s fairly a new rapper. When we did “The Message” — that was the beginning of conscience rap. People started talking more conscience. After Kendrick Lamar does these songs, nobody wants to rap like Kendrick Lamar, nobody wants to rap like Eminem. A lot of people want to rap like Pac and Biggie. That’s my take on it. If you’re cool on your own, if nothing changes, if after Eminem makes his songs and he makes his big splash in the game, if you don’t have a thousand white rappers — nothing’s changed. He’s a good rapper. He’s capable, he’s good. But to say that he has changed the game like Pac changed the game? It’s a big difference.
What a familiar argument about not being played in the club. This time it’s hurled at Kendrick Lamar though.
It’s worth reminding that Melle Mel is not 90, even if he sounds like he is and says that he is. He was born in 1961 and is younger than, let’s say, Chuck D and Flavor Flav of Public Enemy. But Melle Mel’s opinions are indeed closer to that of a deeply old man detached from reality and stuck on his past. He states confidently that he was the first greatest rapper, without recognising the giants that came to the game before him. And the fact that the same very list he discusses with a passion put him at No.48 only can explain why Melle Mel is so emotional about the topic.
The only alive artist the veteran rapper was happy to see on the list was Busta Rhymes. Ememem is white, Kendrick is young, Lil Wain uses autotune, Nicki Minaj is bullshit, and Jay-Z is not as good as Busta Rhymes. We are yet to hear Mel’s opinion on Nas, Snoop Dogg, and Drake being in the Top 10, but it’s unlikely that he would praise them as hard as Busta. And certainly, he will not criticise them as harshly as he did Eminem.
