Who are the best pre-85 MC's?

1. Melle Mel

I kid you not, homeboy was untouchable in his days. Lest we forget, he was co-author and co-MC of one of hip-hop's five all time greatest songs, "The Message". And his work with the Furious Five was genius. They were all good, but Melle Mel was just on a lyrical plain and flow delivery level all his own.

2. Grandmaster Caz

Unlike some of the other pre-80's idols, he really doesn't have a lot of *recorded* wax, and that's a shame. If you hear him on Harlem World tapes or old school freestyles, you know there wasn't anybody better. Here's a tip: you know that verse in Sugarhill Gang's "Rapper's Delight" where the kid says "I'm the C-A-S-A-N-O-V-A and the rest is F-L-Y"? That was a Grandmaster Caz line. CAZ is *SHORT* for Casanova. Those Sugarhill Gang kids basically ripped off Caz freestyles wholesale and blew up overnight jackin somebody else's shit. No disrespect to Sugarhill though, because they DID move on to do some original stuff. It's just s shame that Caz is forgotten.

3. Kurtis Blow

OK, I know a lot of y'all are gonna front, but I think the man was tight. I go out of my way to fish old Kurtis Blow records out of the bargain bins every chance I get and feel like the herbs who got rid of them are fools. Songs like "Basketball" and "If I Ruled the World" are still as tight in ninety-eight as when they were #1 hip-hop hits. Kurtis tried to make that crossover appeal move and most people dissed him and forgot him, but he's still one of our pioneer MC's.

4 and 5. Run-D.M.C.

Come on. Who here DIDN'T memorize "two years ago, a friend of mine, asked me to say some MC rhymes" a *long* time ago? Their shit is legendary. It won't win awards for complexity, but it didn't need to. They were hardcore, in your face, direct and to the point. They rocked beats with the right words and the right timing. They WERE the Kings. No question.

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