Jim Jones Moves Pusha T Out of His Top 50

In a Breakfast Club interview on Friday, Jim Jones made a passionate argument about why Pusha T should not be considered a top 50 rapper of all-time. His primary evidence came in the form of polling the room, and asking each person present whether they could rap along or name 5 of his songs. Some remarked they could, but Jones contested that they could all recite 5 Drake songs. He suggested artists like Drake and Jay Z belong on those lists and not Pusha.

The comparison to Drake was apt, because the discussion around Pusha T is as misleading now as it was when the two beefed all those years ago. Hip hop was never meant to be mainstream, but somewhere along the line it went that way. That fact has made many think that popularity is what defines greatness in that space illustrates this. All-time rapper lists are subjective after all, but shouldn’t they be about more than hit records? 46-year old Jim Jones evaluated another veteran rapper by the same metric a teenager on TikTok might. In this dystopian landscape, throwing the word “relevant” at famous people is the ultimate test. If you aren’t a household name or a currently trending topic, your career is deemed meaningless. With only a fraction of Pusha’s current monthly listeners, perhaps Jones is actually revealing how he views himself.

I’m not particularly a fan of Pusha T’s solo work. I preferred him more with his brother as a member of the Clipse rapping over Neptunes beats. Those two pretty much never had a bad verse and always found a fresh way to tell their street stories. He still has one of the genre’s best pens, but the sound doesn’t resonate with me any longer. Still, I’ll never deny his talent, and I wish all rappers (new and old) would do the same.