Who’s the Greatest Rap Duo of All-Time? Posted by Nathan S. on 06/12/13 | Filed under Opinion, Debates, RH Nation Answers

Another week, another chance to rap nerd the fuck out thanks to our "Question of the Week" series. I know the rest of the world doesn't appreciate your love for endlessly debating rap-related topics, but here we understand you. We get you. This is the trust tree, you're safe here.

First and foremost, I have to give credit to RefinedHype Nation member Big Whiskey for coming up with this week's question:

@refinedhype you may have done this before but one of your posts the other day made me think, greatest rapper duo in history?

— Big Whiskey (@BigWhiskNC) June 12, 2013

That is an excellent point sir, how have we not had a "Greatest Rap Duo of All-Time" discussion yet? Well that's a problem that has to be corrected immediately. Let's do the damn thing.

First off, it seems like a pretty obvious question, but I feel like I have to actually define duo. No shit, "duo" means only two guys, not a group. Did I really have to spell that out? I did. However, there are a lot of...alliances....but do they constitute a group?

Ok, I'm really talking about whether Ghostface and Raekwon count here. They were never a "duo" strictly speaking, they never had a separate duo name, but come on, "Only Built for Cuban Linx" is basically a Ghost x Rae album. (Related note: I guess you could say the same for Kanye and Jay-Z for "Watch the Throne", were they a duo then?) I'll straight up put a compilation album of all their tracks together against any rap duo's album:



Hmmm....while I marinate on whether Ghost and Rae qualify for the discussion at all, let's move onto some candidates I know belong. Mobb Deep has to be in the conversation if we're talking street rap, and the Clipse absolutely can't be ignored; Malice and Pusha T have two legit classic albums under their belts.

Fuck, now that I really think about it, I have to bring up UGK, BlackStar (although they only had one album), EMPD, Gangstarr...all good candidates, but ultimately I don't see how I can go with anyone but Outkast. Pick your qualification, they got it. Multiple Grammys, over 25 million albums sold, multiple classic albums; oh, and one of them is quite possibly the greatest rapper alive, period, and the other is pretty damn close.



I don't know who the fuck you're going to come up with to top Outkast, but have at it people. You're among friends here, you can rap nerd out all you want.