Wayne was billing himself the best rapper alive, on par with JAY-Z, and he was singing on his first single? Yes. In 2008, the song was looked at as a risk by fans and the burgeoning social mediasphere’s armchair A&Rs. Drake was still an up-and-comer and “Weezy had all the authority” when he harmonized the entirety of “Lollipop,” the first single from Tha Carter 3. It’s hard not to hear Kendrick Lamar blacking out with an animated delivery and not harken to the rabid dog flow on “ A Millie.” Songs like 2007’s “ Prostitute Flange” and 2008’s “ Me And My Drank” birthed an entire genre of escapism delivered through barely lucid crooning. Melody will be the defining trait of 2010s rap, so those trailblazers make up the bulk of our list of the most influential artists of the 2010s. (Something he mentioned during his extensive interview with Rap Radar.)Īnd, since then, there have been younger artists who tweaked their predecessors’ formulas with new wrinkles, creating a wing of the rap canon so hard to define that it doesn’t actually have a name. When So Far Gone dropped in 2009, Drake already had peers and mentors like T-Pain, Kanye West, Lil Wayne, and others pushing the boundaries of what could be considered rap music and who could be considered rappers.
In late November, The New York Time s sparked outrage on social media with a piece theorizing that Drake is the reason “rappers are singers now.” While the Toronto artist had a hand in fueling mainstream rap’s fixation with genre-bending and sing-songy flows, he’s far from the end-all of the discussion. Here are the 10 most influential rappers of the decade. Photo Credit: Vickey Ford for Okayplayer & Jamie McCarthy Prince Williams Tim Mosenfelder Brian Stukes/Getty Image As we prepare to enter a new decade, these are the rappers who sculpted the 2010s.
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