There's a God on the Mic: The True 50 Greatest MCs »

Rapper Kool Mo Dee thrived during hip-hop’s nascent years as a vocalist whose tongue-twisting rhymes and speedy delivery put his counterparts to shame. On his 1987 album, How Ya Like Me Now, Kool came up with a ‘hip-hop report card’: a method of rating MCs (Emcees, Masters of Ceremonies, Master Communicators, or rap vocalists) as a way of separating the premier MCs from their often one-dimensional, overrated counterparts (“Sucka MCs”). Building on this original list, Kool has put together an extensive rating system to compile the definitive list of the greatest MCs of all time. Kool rates each MC based on seventeen different categories, ranging from the artist’s lyricism, vocabulary, and freestyling ability to his longevity, body of work, and social impact. Each artist is given a numerical score from one to ten in each of the seventeen categories, as well as an explanation for how this rating was determined. The book includes a complete discography and full-color photograph for each MC, and will also have supplemental lists, such as the top ten storytellers and top ten rhymers.

Library Journal

These books showcase rap and hip-hop icons with varying results. Seminal rapper Kool Mo Dee made his name with the platinum album How Ya Like Me Now (1987), on which he introduced "report cards" for evaluating fellow MCs (rap vocalists). In There's a God on the Mic, he expands on and formalizes that system, scoring 50 prominent rap vocalists (including himself) on a scale of one to ten in 17 areas, including originality, versatility, vocabulary, and social impact. Each dramatically typeset entry begins with representative lyrics, continues with a brief biography and stylistic overview of the artist, pauses for Kool Mo Dee's encapsulated opinion of his or her overall strengths and weaknesses, and wraps with a list (and explanation) of the scores. The scores are then totaled and averaged, resulting in overall grades-with Just-Ice receiving the lowest and Melle Mel (at 94.1) the highest. While Kool Mo Dee's credentials are impressive, he is guilty of some overtly dubious inclusions and almost unforgivable oversights: arguably marginal MCs like Lil' Kim are included, but indispensable rappers such as Eminem and Everlast are omitted. Paniccioli's black-and-white photographs are subpar. Still, though this is not the definitive reference it intends to be, it is nonetheless entertaining and will do well in the circulating popular music collections of larger public libraries. Hip Hop Immortals, on the other hand, manages to convey the essence of rap and hip-hop with its mutual confirmation of text, photo, font play, and color. Not so much a book as a work of pop art, it has the unmistakable feel of a Graphis Annual. Art director Giovanni Russo playfully shrinks, explodes, twirls, and swirls the informative text by Malone (a columnist for Vibe), forcing words into readers' eyes. Hundreds of exceptional photographs (color and b&w) not only capture the style of each "immortal" but also the zeitgeist of hip-hop as a whole: inspired, impressionistic, innovative, and simultaneously illustrative to the max. Editor Beattie's selection of hip-hop greats is far more balanced than Mo Dee's-she includes both sine qua non groundbreakers such as Third Bass as well as world-famous MCs like Eminem. An evident and appropriate tribute to the work of Warhol, Haring, and Indiana, the powerful visual aesthetic of Immortals never overshadows its subjects; instead, it captures and communicates both the unique style and the substance of each rapper. Note to librarians: Immortals does not pander to the gutter dwellers of rap, being almost wholly devoid of ho, bitch, and other epithets. The downside: no table of contents, index, or pagination. Highly recommended for all popular music collections. [This book inspired a movie that will be released, February 10, 2004.-Ed.]-Bill Piekarski, Lackawanna, NY Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.