East Coast rap or West Coast rap?

RAP OF THE RISING SUN

These are the three best rap albums ever made. I think the winner is clear...

WEST COAST IS THE BEST COAST. TUPAC LIVES, Y'ALL.

Certainly a lot of good stuff east wise, but really..

West Coast.

Southern side stuff is pretty good. I.e. Bun B, Yelawolf. But, I'll stick with Fabolous for now.

East Coast, definitely, if not just for Wu Tang and all the related musicians in the Wu Tang family. Then you've got MF DOOM (my personal favorite MC), Aesop Rock, Afrika Bambaataa, the Beastie Boys, Mos Def, Notorious B.I.G. (one of the greatest rappers who ever lived), Dead Prez, A Tribe Called Quest, De La Soul, Kool Keith, and a ton of others.

It would be foolish to say that East Coast rap is completely different from West Coast rap, but I tend to like rap that is from the East more than I tend to like rap that is from the West.

East Coast had Puff Daddy. West Coast wins by default.

West Coast. I prefer rap that is slower. But lately it's been East Coast so there's that.

@jrinswand:

Oh, if MF DOOM counts towards east coast then I submit into evidence the 4th best rap album ever made:

I don't really like a lot of old school shit but when I listen to 90's shit it's usually west coast. I can't stand the preachiness, (now) simplistic rhymes and lyricism, and tired messages that were new back in the day but have become redundant now. When gangsta rap blew up on the west side conscious rappers came out in droves on the east coast. I'd rather listen to Westside Connection get ignant and rowdy as fuck than listen to Guru drone over a beat about something he thought was profound but was kinda common knowledge. Ice Cube and Tupac got preachy as well, to be sure, but it was always more aggressive and therefore kept my attention longer. The beats keep me turned off of most '90's rap though. It's too slow and soul-influenced.

Ice Cube still has mic presence like no other...

I voted east, would have voted South. Been writing about west coast '90s artists a lot lately, though.

You can find out more about my answer here or here.

http://rateyourmusic.com/list/Nodima/

http://www.popmatters.com/pm/archive/contributor/517/

I like a whole lot of artists from both sides, so I voted for peaceful coexistence. When I want gritty and jazzy stuff, I go for East Coast rap and when I want laidback funky shit the West Coast is the best coast.

BRING THA MUTHAFUCKING RUKUSS!!!!

Tupac, Snoop, Dre

West coast.

Beast Coast. Most of the best lyricists come from that side, and the beats tend to have this murky minimal grunt to them.

Pacific North West rap. Maybe Rocky Mountain Rap.

Fresh Coast all day. Kurupt is severely underrated.

I really love east coast emcees but somehow motherfuckers on the westcoast outshine them. And also the west coast new school emcees outshine the new school east coast ones without a doubt.

I'm more of an east coast guy, but my favourite Hip Hop album of all time is Madvillainy and that's got west coast on beats and east coast on the mic.

I mean goddamn fuckin' listen to this shit

Edit: @pyromagnestir knows what's up.

Have to go West Coast because of my love for NWA. But I really don't care, not the biggest rap fan so when I find something I like, I don't care where it originated

MF DOOM is definitely East Coast. First of all, there's the fact that he's from New York. But (I know I said it's impossible to generalize) you could tell that he's from the East just by listening to his rhymes and his beats. His beats are always jazzy and sample-heavy, which seems to be a characteristic of a lot of East Coast rap, and his rhymes are always non sequitur and crazy complicated.

I fucking love Madvillain. See also: DANGERDOOM, King Geedorah (and Monsta Island Czars), Viktor Vaughn, and JJ DOOM.

Fuck dude, that's a hard question. A lot of hot shit came out of the east coast. Tribe, Mos Def, Wu Tang, MF Doom and of course, Biggie are all straight out of new york.

As a west coaster, I'd like to say West but in my heart, I know that the East Coast is where it's at. We still have Pharcyde, N.W.A and Pac though, so again, it's difficult.


Also, anyone that picked option 4 is just ignorant. Hip-hop is too big to be avoided.

"Straight outta Compton - is a brother that'll smother your mother and make your sister think I love her"

Rap artists, ventriloquists. Blood has been shed, lives have been lost. What is it going to take to put an end to all this?

@uniform: have you seen that mr show skit about feuding east coast/west coast ventriloquists?

@casper_:

I'd probably say East coast for me. I prefer boom-bap style shit regardless of coast origin. More often than not, the East coast has more of that flavor than anywhere else.

Kills me because I'm from the West coast. When it's party time or something though, that West coast bumps it right.

Easily the East Coast for me especially nowadays when I think of the latest collectives to come out of each, I'll take Pro Era over Odd Future any day, mostly because Odd Future sucks.

From Sea to Motherfucking Sea, son.

I am coast agnostic though I slightly prefer west coast but there is a ton of good East Coast stuff from the late 80s and early 90s. I love me some Wu-Tang and KRS-One though. I am more of a hip-hop dude than gangster rap dude though. For me it is more of a "Anything made after 2000 other than by rappers that existed before 2000 is shit" type of thing. I have a heavy preference for the late 80s and early 90s when it comes to what I listen to. I do like some of the later 90s stuff. But yeah the start of the Dirty South crap was the end of good rap. Ever since it has all be garbage. I watched this fascinating documentary about the connection between crack and hip-hop in the 80s and 90s and basically all the rappers interviewed in it called all the new rappers a bunch of frauds. It was pretty good. Also, Too $hort's regular voice is the same as his rap voice and it is absolutely hilarious.

I just wrote a rather lengthy paper on the connection of cocaine and how it affected culture in the 80s and 90s, primarily focusing on black culture (for hip-hop and rap it was HUGELY influential) so I have been listening to a ton of this stuff lately. I used to hate it but now I adore it all. Here are a few of songs about crack. There are waaay more than this but here are some of my favourites. Enjoy. Ice-T's imitation of a crackhead is hilarious.

This is the only version of Public Enemy's "Night of the Living Baseheads" I could find. Stupid record companies shut down most of the videos. It turns out having a completely unrelated picture stops record companies from catching you.

Edit: and not about cocaine but hilarious. I have a weird appreciation of WC. In this video he C-walks on a Mercedes-Benz

I don't listen to much hip hop, but I really like Lyrics Born who's from Berkeley, so I guess I'd go with West Coast. That's some hip hop you can move to. His rhymes are great too.

Number D.

Love both, but I prefer West Side. Picked the last option though.

That diss was lightweight compared to Cube's legendary diss track :

As in all things, west coast is better.

@mister9001: Yeah No Vaseline was raw as fuck, but King of the Hill is my personal favorite.

"EVERYBODY IN THE GHETTO, KNOW WHAT YA DOIN', ONE WHITE BOY, AND TWO FUCKIN CUBANS?!!"

I love the Wu-Tang Clan, but in terms of the overall scene, particularly in the 90s, most of my favorite stuff comes from the Best Coast.

East Cost wins easily. East Coast was poppin' off in the '90s every day. Biggie, Nas, A Tribe Called Quest, Slick Rick, Mos Def, Busta Rhymes, KRS-One, Wu-Tang Clan, and countless others.

If you've ever seen this performed live, especially with Busta there, it's probably one of the hypest crowds you will ever see.

Lil' Wayne and Eminem are the best of all time if you ask me....so East Coast I guess.... (or South and mid west).

My favorite rappers are Kanye West, Jay-Z, Biggie, and R. Kelly. All east. A$AP Rocky is new on the scene, he's great, and he's from the east.

LBC

East, by far. But I guess I'm kind of bias.