Why A Zim Hip Hop Top 10 MCs List Simply Can’t Exist

So MTV Base recently dropped a list of the Top 10 South African MCs. People of course caught feelings and the works and social media was set on fire with the same flippancy as an errant child with a box of matches. Oh there were feels for days.

Then we had people whisper and ask if 3-mob.com could put a similar list together for Zimbabwean rappers because, well, there should be one.

Sounded cute and after roughly 3.65497 seconds of giving it a thought (including a sip of that green tea) we decided, nah.

Well first of all we generally haven’t been into lists and that sort of thing. Not that we won’t ever but right now, we have kinda stuck to publishing lists that belong to other people. For some reason it is more fun that way.

The second reason we would not push one now on Zim Hip Hop is because what would that list be like? How do you choose who the better MC was between Tehn Diamond and Cal_Vin. Sure the latter has been pushing more product in the last year and even has two albums while the former still hasn’t delivered his first but does that define an MC?

Pushing that a bit further, Stunner has been in the game for long, so if we put him as number 7 he will have a fit because he does command a huge following. Oh we wil get trolled if we put him as number 1 as well because he has more traction outside social media than most. But is that alone enough?

In fact the game in Zimbabwe is so fragmented. You will even have arguments over who is hip hop and who isn’t.

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On top of that we need stats. Do we know what sales are like? Show attendances by independent sources? Or if people did not come to your show does it make you a bad MC? Or do you just have bad admin? Or were people just broke? In a country were income is about as predictable as what the first lady will say next it’s a struggle.

We have to look at the whole genre, actually. Promoters still look at it as a risk and will hire rappers as add-ons to bigger acts on the bill and not because it is the specific artist in demand. Zim hip hop does not have its standout kids who pack venues

Social media reach helps but how much of it must define whether you are a dope MC or not? And how much of that social media reach is because of music and not just chatter cause you tweet a lot?

So someone else then says skills. If skills was the main factor then we know Kwesta owns KO and Cassper Nyovest who were ranked first and second. So it can’t be that. Bars for bars that is hard and we’d need to get super-academic. Cause then we have to throw Munetsi in there but then the stuff we spoke about up there will be thrown in our faces again.

The simple realities are, well, quite candidly put, until we have tangibles then we can’t really have the big chat about the status of slumbering child that is Zim hip hop. And we aren’t talking about money because you attract the coolest endorsements. We have seen the weirdest things get endorsements in this world so it doesn’t follow that if you get paid for something, you are the dopest at it.