Kendrick Lamar Controlled Breakdown

Kendrick Lamar is the best rapper in the world "right now". and this will be my last post about this…(maybe) unless something DRASTIC happens…anyway..

He proved it with his stellar verse on the song everyone’s been talking about this week: Big Sean’s “Control.”

On the song, K.Dot basically calls out every relevant rapper in the game. Since the song dropped, more than a dozen rappers have dropped their own response (interesting enough, none of the rappers Kendrick called out have responded.)

So who did respond? A bunch of D-listers. We went though the motions of listening to each response and ranking them.

Check them out below.

12. Fred Da Godson

Fred Da Godson isn’t a bad rapper, he’s just not very good one. (In fact, he’s completely average in all aspects of hip-hop music.) On “Sorry,” his response to Kendrick, Fred doesn’t even reach his quota of average. This shit sucks. Not only is this not a good response by Freddy, it’s not even a good verse (no matter how many sorry souls Fred retweets.) Easily the worst of the batch. We hope Kendrick got a good laugh out of it.

11. Iman Shumpert “Dear Kendrick”

Considering that New York Knick Iman Shumpert is a professional athlete — not rapper — we had very little expectations for this. And Iman kind of surpasses our very low bar. Amazingly, this ish is better than Fred Da Godson’s.

10. JR Writer “Control Yourself”

Well look who appeared, straight out of a Spanish Harlem housing project. First, we must give some props to JR: he’s actually dissing Kendrick here. Too bad it’s wack lines (“Like your first album cover, you a good kid.” Ugh.) Here’s the thing: what is JR Writer really going to tell Kendrick, when it comes to making and selling rap music? Just skip this track and listen to this old song of JR Writer tearing Tru Life a new asshole.    

9. B.o.B. “How 2 Rap”

Wait, B.o.B. still raps? Get out of here. This one is kind of weird because he doesn’t mention K.Dot by name. What’s interesting here is that B.o.B. uses Kendrick’s flow. B.o.B. loses points, however, because the verse is kind of short and he ends things with a long guitar solo. Yup, he just couldn’t wait to going back to making songs with Taylor Swift.

8. Mickey Factz “South Park”

Jesus Christ, Mickey Factz? What, Shells wasn’t available? News? It’s been all downhill for Mickey Factz since he watched Raekwon hand Joe Budden an icepack a couple of years back. Factz has always been a good rapper and sticks in some decent bars here.

7. Astro “KONY”

The other day, when the verse hit, Statik Selektah made a special beat (sampling Christopher Walken’s King of New York). That’s the beat Astro uses on “KONY,” his response to Kendrick. The kid is only 16 and he shows some skill and gumption on this track. Props to the kid.

6. Mysonne “Uncontrollable”

If you’re 18 and younger, you have no idea who Mysonne is. Mysonne was actually a dope late ‘90s rapper who went bar for bar with the likes of DMX (in his prime) and Ma$e. Then, well, prison happened. And that’s all he wrote. If you Lysol away the old man spray he brings, Mysonne is still a pretty good rapper. He holds it down for the vets here.

5. Ransom “Control (Freestyle)”

Ransom made some noise a couple of weeks back when he had a mini-TMZ-spat with Nicki Minaj (more of a misunderstanding, really) and now he’s trying to keep his buzz going. Ransom has had a tough time adapting to this new age of rap (where hyper-aggressive, lyrical rap gets you nowhere). On this track, it sounds like Ransom is paying homage to late-’90s lyrical guys like Canibus and Big Pun with the rapid, multi-syllable flow he uses. Ran makes a pretty good showing here. He’s just not effing with Kendrick.

4. Los “Control (Freestyle)”

We’re not sure what’s going on with King Los’ career, but dude is a beast. And he’s been one for a while. (His version of Lil Wayne’s “A Milli” is the best). It seems like he didn’t take K.Dot’s freestyle as a diss, but rather a call for people to rap better. And he holds it down, while using various flows.

3. Cassidy – “Control (Freestyle)”

Cassidy isn’t from New York, however, the Philly-born rapper felt like he had to respond. Cassidy goes in for nearly 6 minutes over the No-ID beat. How’d he do? Pretty good in a Smack-DVD-2005 kind of way. The problem with Cassidy is his let-me-stand-there-and-rap-talk at you flow. Rappers, like Kendrick, for example, do such creative shit with their flows nowadays. Still, Cassidy got some good bars.

2. Lupe Fiasco “SLR 2″ 

Lupe might be a little bad shit, but you gotta give it to dude: son can rap. And he shows off his spit. He’s still a very impressive rapper. He’s rapping well here, but we’re not sure about what exactly (there’s Nazi metaphors here and shit.) The lines that we understood were good, though. We’re just gonna need Toure or the dudes from RapGenius to try to figure this out.

1. Joell Ortiz “Outta Control (Freestyle)”

Props to Joell Ortiz for being the first and best response. He’s still not effing with Kendrick, but Joell more than holds his own.