Ask any emcee who started rapping before the turn of the century who their all-time favorite emcee is and a good percentage will tell you Kool G. Rap. While the Kool Genius may top many lists, he also has one of his own. He recently spoke to VladTV and revealed his top 5 from Queens.

“Run-DMC, right off the top, because they had made so many classic hits that even if you throw them on to this day, it will take you back and you will lose your f*cking mind. And just for that alone, I miss Jam Master Jay so much because you know you will never see Run-DMC on-stage again like the way they started out.” G Rap continued with another Def Jam legend. “LL Cool J. LL because he’s one of the first rappers to bring a complex flow to the game. Maybe not so much with his commercial records, but records like ‘I’m Dangerous’ and songs like that, he really displayed his lyrical and flow capabilities. I mean, he really showed out. For that time. Nas. Nas because he’s everything you would want to hear out of a rapper. He’s lyrical, he’s witty, he’s got wordplay, he has the ability to tell a story.”

“Mobb Deep because Mobb Deep, they came out at a time where I felt that real gritty, gritty hardcore street rap was needed,” G. Rap said of the Queensbridge duo he influenced so heavily. “Because there was the rise of the West Coast at the time and it was like, no one was holding the crown down on our side. So Mobb Deep, I give a lot of credit to for like being one of the representatives of East Coast rap and New York and you know, things of that nature. Holding it down.”

“[Lastly], I would have to say 50 [Cent]. I would have to say 50. I mean, 50, he just, at the time he came out, the impact he had on the world, it was like that hardcore street shit — 50 just brought it back,” Kool G. said in a surprise to some. “He just put f*cking NY on his back and was like, ‘I’ma hold it down, don’t even worry about it.’ [He] brought that gritty sh*t back to the game. And on top of that, he had a h*ll of a story. If somebody was to write a 50 Cent movie before 50 Cent’s life actually unfolded like that, you’d be like, ‘Yeah, this is definitely fiction. This would never happen to nobody.’ Somebody that get shot nine times, survive that and then blow up and become one of the biggest artists in the f*cking game and kind of corner the market almost d*mn near, the whole world like ‘GG-GGG?'”