The Great Debate: Who’s the Better Rapper, Drake or Lil Wayne?

If you love hip-hop then you love debating hip-hop. Who was the greatest emcee of all time? Who won, Jay-Z or Nas? Did Nicki Minaj get booty implants? These hotly contested questions are endless - which is why I've teamed up with Andreas Hale over at TheWellVersed for a new series we're calling The Great Debate. Every week, or two, or whenever we decide, we'll pick a question and then come down on opposite sides. Got it? Good, then let's get started with today's question, "Who's the Better Rapper, Drake or Lil Wayne?" Has the student finally surpassed the teacher?

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The dictionary defines a “rapper” as a person who chats or talks, especially freely; a person who performs rap music, especially professionally. But what the fuck does the dictionary know about rapping? It’s absolutely crucial here that we all understand that we’re talking about rapping. Not the game, not platinum records, not who has the most racks (on racks on racks on racks). Just rapping. We’re not talking about who’s the hottest, or who has the softest sweaters, or the crazier face tattoos…or who can sing better. We’re not talking about all the things that usually get caught up in any “who’s the best rapper” debate. We’re talking about rapping; the words that come out of a rappers mouth, and the skill with which they deliver those words. Nothing more, nothing less. And by that measure Drake still can’t top his Young Money boss Lil Wayne.

I won’t sit here and pretend like Weezy doesn’t have his flaws, I think we all felt at least a little let down by Carter IV. But even though prison somehow seems to have made him less motivated, let’s not forget that Wayne is still capable of capable of lighting up the mic like Wiz lights up some rolling papers.



In many ways Wayne has become a parody of himself, but those ways largely have nothing to do with his actual rapping. If Common had said “life is the bitch, and death is her sister / sleep is the cousin, what a f-ckin’ family picture / you know father time, we all know mother nature / it’s all in the family, but I am of no relation” over a No I.D. beat heads would have been dissecting those metaphors for days. And if we’re handing out Line of the Year Awards, isn’t “real gs move in silence like lasagna” a finalist?

But I don’t really have to prove that Wayne can still rap, I only have to prove that he can rap better than Wayne, and for that all I really need is "It’s Good".



"It’s Good" is useful for our purposes here because it teaches us two things.

1) There’s no real debate that Drake’s sweating Wayne’s flow here. Doesn’t that say it all? Does the better rapper every switch up his style to match the inferior rapper? Yes to the first rhetorical question, no to the second.

2) Since the early days in the South Bronx the easiest way to separate the men from the boys was simple – battling. Battles are rap boiled down to its essence. When you’re in that circle there’s no fronting, nowhere to hide. So another way to phrase the “who’s the better rapper” question would simply be, “who would win in a battle, Drizzy or Weezy”. Frankly, I think we all know Aubrey wouldn’t want it with Dwayne. Wayne’s willingly taking shots at the most powerful man in hip-hop, Jay-Z, on "It’s Good", just imagine what he’s do to Drake’s Charmin’ kissed ass. (Pause, etc. etc.) Unless the audience was comprised entirely of teenage girls, Wayne would crush Drake in a battle. Why? Because he's the better rapper. Period.

I know I’m going to be fighting a lot of anti-Wayne bias here, and I get it, I really do. You know, because Weezy’s “shallow” and Drake’s the swag rapper with a heart of gold who pours his heart out. But a deeper look will reveal the exact opposite. From Rakim to Biggie to Eminem, Tupac to Kanye to Hova, great rappers have not only told their story, they’ve told the story of the world around them. Drake, on the other hand, can literally only rap about one thing – himself. Has he literally ever done a song that so much as acknowledges the larger world, let alone narratively put himself in someone else’s place. Even the supremely narcissistic Kanye consistently raps about much more than just Kanye. That, right there, is the definition of shallow.

Which brings me to one of my favorite Lil Wayne song of all-time.



If Toronto was wiped off the map by a flood Drake would rap about how hard it is for him to deal with his loss. So the day that Drake can rap with the importance and reach of “Georgia Bush” we can revisit this debate, but until then, when it comes to this thing we call rap, Lil Wayne’s still the teacher, and Drizzy’s the student.

Read The Well Versed's Rebuttal and vote below.