nikkas can't be objective with Tip on either side. Either nikkas gassing some of his weaker shyt to the heavens, or nikkas downplaying the strength of his best work...
Tip vs 50 would be a good one and while peak popularity was different, they are pretty much the same tier of rapper. Tip's '08 wasnt quite as big commercially as Fif's '03 but it was as big as Fif's '05, we not about to sit here and pretend Tip at peak wasnt a commercial smash...
And some of yall in here throwing shot out just to say it. Urban Legend is good and was big when it dropped but it's not a classic, too many weak tracks on there. The problem with Tip is he doesn't have but maybe one classic max, way too much filler and inconsistent commercial BS on all his shyt...
The problem here is the same can be said of Fif, and nikkas with bias can't acknowledge it. 50's backstory and The Machine behind him made GRODT as big as it was. It's a good album, I always thought "classic" is a little strong for it, it's not a Top 50 rap record. But it's certainly wanna of the biggest from a commercial standpoint hip hop has ever seen, so we talk about it like it's a Top 50 record...
50 also peaked so high so soon that he was on a decline ever since. Because he peaked so high he still had good music afterwards but he never matched the success or possibly even the quality of music he hit on Get Rich, certainly not the popularity though...
Fif's run gets overrated, it was big and filled a void in a wide open era but it was brief and a few other nikkas of the same mid-00s era were shytting on his work quality wise, they just didn't have the full support of The Machine behind them: a number if Weezy joints, Trap Or Die, Be (Common), a couple Kanye joints, The Documentary, the Boosie/Webbie mixtape, Food & Liquor, Banks first drop, there's some I'm forgetting...
And cats are quick to throw out "Tip ain't got nothing touching ______", which is false unless you're speaking from a strictly commercial vantage, but yall need to say that then. And dudes trying to support Tip with some of his weaker cuts...
Tip and Fif is close, they both mid-tier on the All-Time boards and I ain't got a issue either way. My stylistic tastes favored Tip more and I found him more relatable but I dont think he can't be fukked with by 50, like some of yall saying. Yall doing too much...
I lived in Memphis my 8th grade year (2002-03 school year) and my introduction to Tip was on a mixtape called "Tennessee's Finest", this 8ball track with him and Flip. This is about 2 years before him and Flip's beef, it's a year before Trap Muzik, but after I'm Serioys, but I never heard it. This was when I first heard Tip then like 6 months later Never Scared drops and I'm like shyt that's the nikka from 8ball song lol:
(Second verse 1:35 and it was nice, no fronting)
I'm not from NY so I didn't know shyt about 50, coincidentally this is the same year I first heard 50, when Wanksta dropped it was huge in Memphis and any time you turned on BET, MTV, VH1 he was everywhere. Wanna say it was around October 2002 I heard Wanksta and his star power was evident, he was everywhere for like the next year solid...