Competition has always played a big role in hip hop. Battle rhymes, diss songs, trying to outshine someone on his own song, it’s all in the spirit of competition.
But in the mid-90s, the competition in New York was especially heavy. Let’s think about the rappers were coming up at that time – you had Nas and Big both releasing landmark debuts in ’94, Mobb Deep damn bringing all of Queensbridge wherever they went, Raekwon with The Purple Tape and the rest of Wu-Tang by his side. Most of the rappers on our greatest of all time list came on the ’90s East Coast.