Rapsody sat down on BET’s Rate The Bars to dissect verses from King Mez, Tyga, Bhad Bhabie, J. Cole, Lauryn Hill, Kendrick Lamar and more.
Right off the bat, the Grammy-nominated lyricist was impressed by King Mez’s lines from his Data Plan .002 cut, “MF+G.”
“The last line is what took it all away: ‘I rap like a bitch with a million followers.’ That’s an ill way to say how confident you are,” she says.
Rapsody settled on a 2.5 for DaBaby‘s “Suge (Yea Yea)” lyrics and recognized another North Carolina native, J. Cole’s, verses right away in his 2018 freestyle, “Album of the Year.”
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“Man, this is ill right here. I gotta say, this a Cole line?” she asks, before awarding him a 4.5.
Tyga’s “Startender” line, ‘Got the rims so biggie that my tires look skinny,” got a laugh and a 4 from Rapsody.
“Homie’s real confident in his bars, but I like how he describes his confidence,” she adds.
The lowest ranking went to Bhad Bhabie’s lyrics, “I ain’t nothin’ like these hoes / Don’t compare me to no one / Money green like a CeeLo / Yeah, my pocket so swole up” from her single “These Heaux.”
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“I ain’t even gonna try to break that down,” Rapsody says. “I ain’t gonna give you a one, but I’ll give you a one and a half… Who wrote that? Yeah, that’s bad.”
Rapsody recalled Kendrick’s bars from their collaborated Laila’s Wisdom cut, “Power,” giving him a 5.
“The best thing about Kendrick is his rhyme scheme,” she says. “You could teach a course on these lines, that’s how in-depth they are.”
She also broke down her own lyrics on “Sojourner,” her J. Cole-assisted single from last year.
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“I’m the author of that,” she says. “When you really write the bars, you know the bars.”
Phonte earned praise for his verses on Drake’s 2007 “Think Good Thoughts.”
“That’s bars!” she says. “This is a 6. Phonte one of the best ever to do it… I used to ride around and study Phonte, like the depth of his lyrics.”
Rapsody closes the segment by calling Lauryn Hill the G.O.A.T. and comparing her “Lost Ones” lines to The Color Purple. She also gives frequent collaborator and Grammy-nominated producer 9th Wonder, known by his rap name 9th Matic, props for his storytelling bars on “Make It Big.”
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Check out her Rate The Bars episode above.
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