Billboard reveals bizarre all-time top 100 from its 25-year-old rap chart

It’s Macklemore. Sorry.

To mark the 25th anniversary of the Hot Rap Songs chart, Billboard has revealed the top 100 tracks since the tally began – and it makes for the weirdest playlist you’ve ever heard.

When the chart launched in 1989, N.W.A. and Ice-T were riding high and Yo! MTV Raps was only a few months old; hip-hop wasn’t yet in the mainstream and the concept of the white rapper was still pretty much a joke.

Old school heads will despair, then, at the appearance of not one, but two Macklemore & Ryan Lewis tracks in the top five. And although that might suggest that newer songs have an advantage, only three of the top 10 date from after 2000 (the other being Waka Flocka Flame’s ‘No Hands’).

Other high-scorers include 69 Boyz’s 1994 hit ‘Tootsee Roll’, Missy Elliott’s ‘Hot Boyz’ and Coolio’s ‘Gangsta’s Paradise’.

Check out the top 10 below and see (and hear) the rest of the list on Billboard.

 

1. ‘Thrift Shop’ – Macklemore & Ryan Lewis feat. Wanz, 2013

2. ‘Tootsee Roll’ – 69 Boyz, 1994

3. ‘Hot Boyz’ – Missy “Misdemeanor” Elliott feat. Nas, Eve & Q-Tip, 1999

4. ‘Can’t Hold Us’ – Macklemore & Ryan Lewis feat. Ray Dalton, 2013

5. ‘Expression’ – Salt-N-Pepa, 1990

6. ‘Gangsta’s Paradise’ – Coolio feat. L.V., 1995

7. ‘Flava In Ya Ear’ – Craig Mack, 1994

8. ‘Big Poppa/Warning’ – The Notorious B.I.G., 1995

9. ‘No Hands’ – Waka Flocka Flame feat. Roscoe Dash & Wale, 2010

10. ‘The Humpty Dance’ – Digital Underground, 1990

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