Who’s the Greatest Atlanta Rapper of All-Time? Posted by Nathan S. on 01/29/14 | Filed under Top Stories, Debates, RH Nation Answers, City Series

It's Wednesday, aka hump day, aka why did they create a day that's so fucking hard to spell correctly day, aka "Question of the Week" day. Those who have been paying attention already know what to expect, a new edition of our ongoing "City Series" where we try to figure out the greatest rapper from every respective city in the good ol' U.S. of A. And fuck it, I might go abroad too if I'm really feeling international. 

Anyway, after tackling New York City and L.A., I thought we'd move South to the land of strip clubs, strip clubs and, let me not forget, strip clubs. Of course I'm talking about Pierre, South Dakota Atlanta! Starting in around 2000 Atlanta officially became one of the biggest cities in the country for hip-hop, if not the biggest, a status that it's maintained until today. But who's the city's greatest rapper?

As a reminder, here are the guidelines for defining "Greatest From That City": 

Inherent Dopeness: In a vacuum where record sales and influence don't matter, how purely/rawly dope are they? If you could only listen to one rapper from that city until the day you died, who would you pick? If there's a national rap battle, best song wins, who are you picking to represent that city? 

Influence: When they did something, did the rest of their city follow? And by extension, did the rest of the country follow? Have they proven they can have multiple generations of influence? 

City Association: The two above are pretty standard criteria for any RefinedHype debate, but this is the x-factor in the "City Series" - how closely is that rapper linked to his/her city? For example, if I say "Toronto hip-hop" a lot of people's strongest association is going to be with Drake. (It's an example, relax, we'll get to the Toronto-specific debate in due time.) By contrast, while Tupac's roots are Bay Area, he also has some really strong associations with L.A. (Again, we'll get there.) Point it, the greatest rapper from that city has to really embody and represent that city. 

Got it? Now, onto the nominees. 

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Andre 3000 - The biggest question here is what to do with Outkast. Since I allowed Wu-Tang to function as a "rapper" in the NYC portion, I should allow Outkast to function as a group too. But...what if I give Andre credit for everything he did in Outkast, plus everything he did solo? Than Andre is, logically, bigger than just Outkast. Andre's inherent dopeness score is off the charts, although his "eccentric" ways might hurt his influence and city association score. Or maybe it actually increases it? I gotta marinate on it. 

Big Boi - See above, although you can argue he's had a better career than 3 Stacks considering he's actually put out solo albums. While Andre's largely been a hermit outside of Outkast, Big Boi's been active in extensively working new artists for years - did you know Future is Dungeon Family? And, of course there's...

Killer Mike: He hasn't had the mega-super success of the other people I'm mentioning here, but bar for bar, verse for verse, Killer Mike's as good as anyone else who's ever come out of the A. Mike would step into the studio with anyone here with the utmost confidence. 

T.I.: The sign of a great emcee is that I don't really have to make the case for why he's a great emcee. Incredible success, incredile success, has put on a lot of other artists. And he's held up much better than Luda - TIP straight got him in the "In the A (Remix)". 

Ludacris: Now, I think we can all agree that he's fallen off in the "Fast & Furious" days, but let's not forget about how big Luda once was. I'm talking guest verses on some of the biggest songs ever. And the dude could fucking RAP, and he's repped Atlanta to the fullest.  

As always, this isn't supposed to be some sort of definitive list, this is supposed to be an excuse for us to talk about dope rappers. And I'm far from an expert on Atlanta hip-hop, so if you're from the A, feel free to add nominees I may have forgotten. For example, I can't say I know his shit well, but I've heard just about every Atlanta rapper cite Kilo Ali as a big influence.

And with that, let's do this damn thing:  

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