The 100 greatest Hip-Hop songs of the 2000's: 1-10

1. "99 Problems" - Jay-Z

How do you defend the statement of claiming one song to be greater than all others? It's not easy. You could approach it from a cultural standpoint; trying to determine what song had the largest impact on our pop culture. You could consider artistic merit and aesthetics, two factors most people don't even consider when they think about Hip-Hop. Really, when you break it down, it has to be great for greatness sake. Great as in powerful. Great as in dominant. Great as in the fiery bellows of the greatest MC of the decade, in vicious top-form from a self-imposed fictional retirement. Great as in Rick Rubin, who here delivers a beat so other-worldly and unique that we have to question where the hell it came from. Great as in hands down the purest slice of Hip-Hop nostalgia in years that at the same time sounds years beyond 2003. When it comes down to it, I guess I had to ask myself, "Would it be right to put any song above this one?" Guess not.

2: "B.O.B." - OutKast

A lot of rock critics are saying now that the fusion of Hip-Hop and electronic dance music into the gelatinous pop-like substance we consume now was inevitable, fueled by the TRL generation. Unfortunately they and a large number of other "hipster-types" (i.e. people that can't dance) deride our modern booty music as unrefined and low-cultured. How wrong they are. If only they weren't total losers they would know that the Akons and J.R. Rotems of the world owe their Bugati's to "Bomb's Over Baghdad", a bombastic techno-rap that's so advanced and beyond comprehension I swear it was sent from the future. A Miami-Bass injected, dancefloor-drenched boogie anthem about a war that wouldn't start for another three years that ends chanting "Power music, electric revival!" To listen to this song is to hear the next ten years of Pop and Hip-Hop in five minutes. How did they do that?

3: "A Milli" - Lil' Wayne

The changes between 2000 and 2010 are pretty huge, and if you hear something in 2010 it's probably gonna sound more like "A Milli" than "B.O.B." Just a screwed up vocal sample, chopped up real quick with a simple yet sinister bass and snare. The staples of Southern Hip-Hop. So why "A Milli"? Because a beat like this puts it all on the rapper, and in 2008 there was no better rapper than Lil' Wayne. "A Milli" was an album stand in for every mixtape track Wayne had done in the years leading up to Tha Carter III; straight freestyle rapping, no hook. Without any of the frills of modern pop production Lil' Wayne made one of the most impactful singles of the decade with no chorus to speak off. Ask any geek off the street and he can probably rap the whole thing back to you.

4: "Paper Planes" - M.I.A.

There's something so intoxicating to American ears about international sounds bent into American genres. When we hear South Africans battle rapping in crazy afro-dutch accents we realize just how far our little hometown hero Hip-Hop has come since 1973 in the Bronx. M.I.A. was hyped up before her 2005 debut as an Indie savior of dance and Hip-Hop. It wasn't until her sophomore album Kala that her real success came, when she transformed her early multi-cultural jam vibe into a gritty, third world envisioning of American pop music. "Paper Planes" is the albums highlight and heart, a towering slab of funked-out rap that's half swagger and half satire. The snaps and thumps of the beat owe themselves to Southern Rap, but the international subject and starlet elevate this song into something bigger than the sum of its parts. By the time little Maya taunts "Some I murder, some I let go", you feel like Tupac in '95: Untouchable.

5: "What You Know" - T.I.

Southern Hip-Hop has been a lot of things, but most of the time its been almost a second tier genre. Throughout the 90s Hip-Hop's focus was on the coasts, and artists from New York and California were the ones bankrolled by major labels. They got the freshest beats and the videos with high production values. Southern MCs relied on soul samples or crude electro beats (think Goodie Mob and Mannie Fresh, respectively), while they formed their own independent labels. Wouldn't you know that this model set the stage for the influx of diversity in rap in the 2000s, and now Southern MCs dominate the landscape. What was (and still is) a challenge is adapting the Southern sound to the ever homogenized dance music of the Billboard charts. Words used to describe the dirty south of old might be "dusty", "funky", or "ghetto". "What You Know" conjures words like "regal", "epic", and "awesome". T.I., Atlanta trap superstar who started out rapping about rims, creates a track that rocks as hard as any Metallica song and is just as precise. Transforming the dirty dirty to the high and mighty.

6: "Hate It Or Love It" - The Game feat. 50 Cent

Nostalgia is huge part of Hip-Hop. The debates about "realness", or what constitutes real Hip-Hop, are tied up in the past. Old schoolers claim that what's on the radio isn't real rap. Guys from the 90s get pissed when you call them old school. The young MCs cite Jay-Z as Hip-Hop history. So when contemporary artists pay tribute, or make concessions, to the earlier days the results almost always take you back to simpler times, even if you weren't around for them. If Game really wants to be Dr. Dre, then this is his "Express Yourself"; a song imbued with positivity despite the reality of the rap interfere. Put this on at your next party and count the smiles.

7: "Drop It Like It's Hot" - Snoop Dogg feat. Pharrell

The Neptunes had to work with a lot of people before they found the one voice perfectly suited for their spaced-out electro funk. At a time when rap radio was yelling at you to "Lean Back" and "Get Low", things got real quiet whenever "Drop It Like It's Hot" came on. Over the deepest beat they ever made the Neptunes and Snoop make some strange magic here, with Snoop's threats and street language swallowed whole by the beat's echoing hugeness. As soon as this track was everywhere, imitators came running with quiet storm beats, but it just wasn't the same. If you need an example of perfect chemistry in 21st century rap, look no furthur than Snoop and the Neptunes.

8: "Country Grammar (Hot Shit)" - Nelly

Something I asked myself a lot in writing this list was, "how did this happen?" How did we get to the point of rap being just another aisle in Tower Records to having Hip-Hop pop, Hip-Hop culture? Hell, some would say we have a Hip-Hop president. If I had to pick a turning point for the tide of Hip-Hop in America, it would be this song. At the beginning of this new millenium, a young man was given unto the world, and his name was Nelly. He had a song called "Country Grammar", built around a grade-school jump rope rhyme and sing-song rapped at super speeds. He wasn't from New York or California, he wasn't even from Atlanta. He was from...St. Louis? His music video had all these crazy hood people, and rims, and fried chicken! This was not the same old music we'd always heard. It was new, and most importantly it was distinct. This song blew the roof off regional rap; finally audiences were ready for something new. In the song, Nelly shouts out nearly every city across America, and finishes with "getting paid off this country grammar." Thus the definition of regional rap in the 2000s.

9: "Int'l Players Anthem (I Choose You)" - UGK feat. OutKast

This song, more than anything else, reminds us of what we don't have in contemporary Hip-Hop. The passing of Pimp C just months after this song was released made it so UGK would never have a single like this again. This was the biggest song they'd released since "Big Pimpin'" came out nearly ten years earlier, and a chance at fame was finally theirs. OutKast makes one of their first real Hip-Hop songs in five years, and their abscense from the Top Ten can be felt. Three 6 Mafia crafts a beat for Southern Soul purists that sounds more like Motown than Cash Money. In so many ways, this is the music we're not getting; souled out slow jams about marraige and fidelity, and also pimpin and poppin tags. This song should have launched UGK into the stratosphere, but there's no UGK left. RIP to the Pimp.

10: "Daylight" - Aesop Rock

Where are the descendants of Aesop? Where are the legions of high-functioning MCs gracing the covers of indie music mags, spitting dense cerebral lyrics to art-crowd white boy fans? In 2000 it seemed that they would be everywhere, saving Hip-Hop from itself. Aesop's label, Definitive Jux, was supposed to be the vessel, delivering a cadre of post-modern rappers. So where is alternative Hip-Hop in 2010? Jurassic 5 broke up, Black Star still only has one album, and just last month El-P stepped down as director of Def Jux, the label he founded in 1999. The idea was that indie rap would coexist alongside mainstream rap, but just look around. The scores of underground MCs still exist, but they no longer strive for a unified aesthetic. Instead they try harder and harder to sound like everybody else. This great rap movement never came, but Aesop Rock's 2001 album Labor Days is its high-water mark. "Daylight" is a song imbued with the raw passion that separated these alternative MCs from the flock. It's a shame this didn't blow up, because its one of the greatest Hip-Hop songs of all time.