Musical legends of other genres are fairly easy to find. The Beatles, Miles Davis, Bob Dylan, etc are artists your pretty much born knowing. Where as Chuck D, Ghostface, Rakim and Kool G Rap are artists you have to find on your own really.

When people hear all of the one hit wonders on the radio, as well as all of the songs about sex, drugs, etc. They just say what the he’ll is this? It’s garbage. Which is partially their fault and partially the radios fault because they don’t look hard enough and the radio plays the gabage that they are mistakenly calling Hip Hop.

Anyway, if you look at hip hop as a lifestyle, and consider the great, deep music an element of that lifestyle, then I rank it higher than all of the others genres, because it means more.

As far as artists I’d rank with put there with other greats, Chuck D of Public Enemy, Rakim, Pos of De La Soul, and Ghostface Killah. As far as producers, The RZA, Preemo, Pete Rock, Marley Marl, and Dilla.

I feel all of those artists had a role in making hip hop what it is today, and all of them are GOAT candidates, IMO.

but rap and hip hop definitely has not made the as many contributions to music as rock has.

i think i would at least give them a spot in my top 15, probably top 10. simply because i base my GOAT lists on influence and creation of music based on different eras of time. but there are definitely more musicians that have contribute so much to music. from a completely objective standpoint, rap is a great genre and deserves recognition as well.

But for me, I prefer hip hop above all genres

Now rock/ ska is my favorite genre now(big sublime fan) and not really into rap/hip hop as I use to be. I still occasionally jam out to lupe,nas,mos def, common and ETC.

I still think rap should get more,/100% respect from other genre’s though I mean all races listen to rap/hip hop. I think it has brought alot of people from different races together. When you go to a rap/hip hop concert I see nearly every race there in decent amounts.

Same goes with reggae, I can rarely find anyone from any race who doesn’t like Bob Marley, or at least dancing to reggae.

So yup Rap/hip hop is mos def up there. Number one probbly goes to rock, contributed to everything! Jimmy Hendrix is the man! = )

I hope everyone is having a good day.

Hip hop has made its contibutions.. anytime you create a genre of music that gets criticized as much as hip hop has and been successful, you’ve made your mark. Just with the fact alone that hip hop artists have collabed with rock and country artists shows contibution as well. I mean, they’re being recognized by the genres that may be concidered to have contributed more.

RUN DMC would be ranked up there in the top 30 all genres combined IMO

Hip hop combines the best of all the genres into one. In terms of music it gives a voice to the voiceless, something that rock and country really haven’t done. I didn’t include blues and jazz because they’re not as popular today. In terms of non music issues, hip hop has the ability to bring races together. There’s not really anything on that scale that rock or country has done.

I think some rappers place higher in terms of music as a whole than they would in terms of just rapping. I would place people like Q-Tip and Wyclef fairly high. As well as Aesop Rock, who is essentially the Bob Dylan of rap.