1. Kanye West
So we reach the climax of this little adventure, and well... I'ma let you finish, but Kanye West had the best position in this countdown OF ALL TIME. Stealing the top spot from Jay-Z himself, the self-proclaimed God of hip-hop music may be suffering from delusions of grandeur to some extent and you may not like him as a person (for which frankly you cannot be blamed) but you'd be a fool to deny that he is a genius as far as rap music is concerned. West is known to break the mould at any given opportunity, no matter what the cost - he's an outside-the-box thinker and this is reflected in his music, most notably the enormously acclaimed 'My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy' (considered by many to be one of the best hip-hop albums of all time) and this year's 'Yeezus', but throughout the rest of his 15 year-long career as well. What ultimately makes Kanye West the greatest rapper of our generation is that he is genuinely only concerned with making music that he would want to listen to. He's not afraid to be controversial and he completely cuts the corporate crap in favour of making music which he considers to be perfect. He honestly just does not care if anyone else likes it. Take 'Yeezus' - on the face of it, this album was much like listening to a synthesiser being smashed over the head of a 70s soul singer during some sort of epic dubstep exorcism. Of course, as one of the most talented (and possibly mentally unstable) musical minds of this generation, he's redefined the genre more times than us mere mortals can even begin to comprehend and he manages time after time after time to create some brilliantly twisted near-masterpiece which ticks every single box and makes Kanye West
the artist to beat. He may claim to be a God, and that might be (is) a silly thing for him to do, but let's be honest, as far as rap music goes, he's about as close as they come.