The 17 Most Hated On Rappers (Right Now)

Hate is a constant in hip-hop. If you don't have haters, your rap career doesn't matter. No one wants to win on consensus; the biggest rappers have always courted controversy. From Ice Cube's "N***a You Love to Hate" to Nas' "Hate Me Now," hip-hop stars need that love-hate tension in order to achieve any measure of success.

For some artists on this list, like Big Sean, strong feelings either way can actually help propel a career further. For others, the hate raises questions about race, class and gender, the very fault lines that continue to define our culture's most important discussions. And sometimes, rappers are just weird, annoying or provocative people.

These are the 17 Most Hated On Rappers (Right Now).

Written by David Drake (@somanyshrimp)

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How did Wiz even make this list? Well, prior to his relationship with Amber Rose, he probably wouldn't have. Since his sartorial decision to become a sort of hipster-streetwear-hippie—like a post-Odd Future Jimi Hendrix—he's managed to obtain a few new haters along the way.

He's gone from being an everyman snapbacks and tattoos stoner rapper to seeming a little odd. It's managed to make a rapper who was once the coolest guy in the room into one of the weirder ones, which he's obviously comfortable with. But rap fans hate change.

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Big Sean has been on good records and made good records. He has a sense of humor, a catalog of hits, and it would be hard to say that he's unsuccessful. But he has also suffered at the hands of knee-jerk Internet hate.

It was apparent from the beginning that his relationship with Kanye benefited him greatly, helping him jump ahead of many other artists. This isn't new to hip-hop; we saw it happen with Game as well. That pedestal has made Sean a target for criticism, and his penchant for oddball ad-libs and pronunciation makes him an easy one.

As the hits have piled up, a lot of rap fans have come around to Big Sean, but he's prone to being the subject of Twitter hashtags that make fun of his lyrical approach.

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The hate directed at Pitbull seems out of line, if only because he's such an affable guy. After the Internet conspired to send him to Alaska for a (fake) contest performance, the rapper gamely played along, performing at a Kodiak Wal-Mart. But the reasons behind the vitriol directed at him have a lot to do with his decision to leave hip-hop behind and embrace the international-friendly sounds of popular dance music.

He joins similarly-minded artists from the R&B world, like Ne-Yo (with whom he collaborated on 2011's "Give Me Everything"), and the dance world, like Afrojack (ditto), in creating music that is only tenuously rooted in his genre of origin. While he may have been known for his work with Lil Jon and the Ying Yang Twins, today Pitbull is chasing checks to massive stadium performances.

It's an open invite for haters who'd rather see rap artists succeed on the genre's terms, rather than someone else's.

Believe it or not, Flo Rida does, in fact, rap. You won't hear him on hip-hop stations, and his name never comes up in discussions about great rappers, despite his intense success. This is because he makes club music that seems to share no real estate with the rest of rap music, unless you attend certain Top 40 clubs.

Top 40 and popular rap used to occupy the same space, particularly in the late '90s and early 2000s, but today's rap mainstream has pulled further from pop music's mainstream. The few remaining "hip-hop" artists in that world are the descendants of the Black Eyed Peas, the first group to make radical gestures towards dance music's four-on-the-floor beat.

Flo Rida isn't a distinctive MC, and doesn't seem to have much in the way of hip-hop fans, so hating him is a bit fish-in-a-barrel. But even his big club hits, like 2011's "Good Feeling," are knockoffs of more successful club tracks (Avicii's "Levels.") He's an easy target, although he's less rapper than he is pop star, so much of the hate from hip-hop heads feels unnecessary.

It's 2012 and the monoculture is dead; you have to go out of your way to hear a Flo Rida track. Instead, he's a reminder to rap fans that hip-hop's relevance to the mainstream is ebbing.

Wale has had one of the more random, Frankenstein-styled careers in rap history. First he was a hipster darling on the Mixtape About Nothing. He was a streetwear fanatic. He was the savior of D.C. He made Go-Go raps, based on the genre of D.C.-derived funk music. He was a Lady Gaga collaborator. Now, he's an MMG artist. He releases strip club music with Waka Flocka ("No Hands"). It makes for a patchy, unexpected catalog, although not a bad one.

By the time his last album was released to considerable sales, it was evident that he'd managed to develop a solid fan base. But his haters unite around two basic issues: his relative lack of an identity is the first, a somewhat unfair assessment. Sure, there's a certain incoherence to his path, but there's also something endearing about the way he's managed to fall backwards into becoming a bankable name, even if it required an assist from Rick Ross.

The other characteristic his haters glom onto is his public persona. There was his ornery, passive-aggressive Twitter account, lashing out at haters, the "#classicalbum" tweets, the sour grapes about other buzzing artists in a recent MMG Vibe profile. He seems to have an acerbic streak despite his success, and nothing seems to draw more ire from the people who hate him.

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Hate directed at French Montana seems to derive mostly from the impression that he's a lazy rapper. But of course, it's this sloppy swag that first garnered attention to him in the first place. French seems un-ruffle-able, a sly, controlled force in an industry often beset by manic creatives. There are a few other reasons haters have been drawn to the rapper; it's fairly evident that he owes a good part of his early success to his association with Max B, and many of his songs followed Max's formula.

He was also blessed to have early production from Harry Fraud, one of the game's most underrated producers. But French has managed to score legitimate hits, particularly street-oriented ones, in a rough climate for New York rappers. It's hard not to feel like the hate he receives is as much about the gentrification of NYC rap as it is anything having to do with French himself.

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What Chief Keef is now, Gucci Mane was four years ago—at least as far as what he represents to haters. Regularly called "retarded," mocked for his accent, his potbelly, and his sartorial decisions, Gucci became a hero to his fans by embracing his status as an underdog. For many, Gucci was Lowest Common Denominator rap.

His behavior outside of hip-hop—problems with probation violations in particular—was further evidence that he was stupid, and his performance style, from the stuffed-nose flow to his improvisational, no-pad-no-pencil approach, reinforced this assumption.

Until you listened to his actual lyrics, which, as it turned out, were clever, ultimately shifting the entire direction of Southern rap lyricism in the late 2000s. The haters completely missed the boat with Gucci; not only was his rap style genuinely original, but he had bars. He was also one of the first rappers to adapt his actual rap style to the 2000s method of flooding the market. The demand for his verses was so high at one point that he stopped physically writing lyrics altogether and began building one of the largest improvised catalogs in hip-hop history, thanks to unflagging work ethic and vibrant originality. Plus, his sixth sense for hooks meant he didn't just rap, but became a songwriter as well, perfect for the post-superproducer era.

Of course, this isn't to suggest that Gucci didn't have problems. His recidivism issues ultimately sidelined his career, as did some bad label decisions (pandering to the East Coast on his lead singles, removing his early mixtapes from DatPiff). To say nothing of the ill-considered facial tattoos and collaborative album with V-Nasty, both of which suggested to some of his fans that perhaps he wasn't a self-aware man-of-the-people they had initially perceived, and was instead a genuine weirdo.

He remains one of the biggest rappers in the South, but the energy that once bore his career to the mainstream isn't quite what it once was.

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In Soulja Boy's heyday he was routinely blamed for everything from completely destroying hip-hop (at worst) to eroding values of hip-hop culture and our troubled youth (at best). Haters today see him in a slightly less threatening light. Now, rather than destroying hip-hop, he's a parasite, jumping from trend to trend.

This is partly true, but now that hip-hop has survived his hits, naturally it's his work as an A&R that has led the next generation of artists to destroy the genre from the inside. Soulja Boy may have stopped creating significant new music, but he's ushered in the careers of Lil B, Riff Raff and Chief Keef, never mind lesser-known talents like Kwony Kash (responsible for Soulja's "Zan With That Lean").

Perhaps the one thing that causes the most hate, however, is that he's spent an entire career completely evading the assumption that he had only 15 minutes of fame. Haters wanted nothing more than to see his mansion up for sale like Hammer in the '90s. Also, haters have been mad since he got himself some Bathing Apes in "Crank Dat"—this should never be discounted.

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Riff Raff invites hate for a few reasons. Arguably, he's perpetrating a stereotype, and playing up a one-dimensional character. There are plenty of good reasons to suspect that the appreciation of his art has a strange relationship with race. One needs only to look at the relative lower profile of former comical partner-in-crime and African-American performer TKO Capone; how did Riff Raff leap frog ahead of him so suddenly?

There are also some less dramatic reasons for the hate he receives. Riff Raff is a performer more interested in entertainment than creating serious art, and for a certain strain of hip-hop fan, there's nothing worse than a rapper whose goal doesn't involve dropping a new Illmatic or Ridin' Dirty. As a rapper, the Caucasian sensation has had his fair share of catchy, funny songs, and it's understandable why people are drawn to his outlandish persona.

But he also provides quite a dilemma; similarly amusing Texan drawlers haven't ascended to the same profile, and it's not difficult to see that there might be a level of identification going on with his audience (down to the high-profile Diplo cosign) that gives him an extra boost. Riff Raff isn't taken at his word; it's all a joke, while non-white rappers are presumed to lack that self-awareness.

It's hard not to feel sympathy for Shyne. He spent the better part of his adulthood behind bars for a crime he may not solely have been responsible for, and he ended up getting deported the moment he was freed. But since his release, he's really been racking up negative attention. Two factors seem to bear responsibility.

One: he keeps inserting himself into the news via false or overblown controversies (hating on Kendrick Lamar, accusing Rick Ross of mocking his recently-discovered faith). Two: incarceration somehow destroyed his rap talent, and he hasn't released a worthwhile song since the early 2000s. The best defense of his career is that he's suffered and so should be left alone to put his life back together. But every time he makes headlines, he makes it that much more difficult.

For years, rappers like Vanilla Ice and Eminem faced criticism that their music was going to whitewash hip-hop, to present a safer version of music for white America that couldn't deal with the genre on its own terms. This was true to a degree, as it always is when white rappers are performing for a black audience. But Mac Miller, who shot from virtual obscurity to becoming a behemoth of independent rap music, seems to embody this idea with a greater resonance than most before or since.

When Eminem arose, much noise was made defending him on the grounds that he still came from the trailer parks, therefore represented for the underclass, and that he was undeniably skilled. Mac Miller has had to prove neither of these points. Mac Miller appeals to a very wide audience that has interest in seeing themselves on stage, where their identity is tied as much to skin tone as it is any kind of artistic accomplishment.

So it's easy to see why haters would be drawn to his career; he makes for an easy target, as does any artist who seems to have earned acclaim in part thanks to race. But that kind of blanket hate also refuses to acknowledge the ways in which he's managed to build a successful brand independently, without the assistance of major labels. His work connects with audiences for a reason, and sometimes it's just because those audiences like his songs.

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Drake's got a significant hate-base for some pretty obvious reasons. His entire existence in the game relied on ridiculous advantages that most hip-hop artists had to fight for. He started out famous. He began with money. He represents a nation known primarily for rap acts like Swollen Members and Choclair. He has an accessible kind of yuppie vibe. He sings. But this is where the territory gets rocky, and his advantages—those things that gave him a leg up on the competition—start to become disadvantages. He sings. He doesn't have the typical hood cosigns. He's seen as soft.

In an artform where narratives are so heavily reliant on struggle, he's had none. But being the anti-underdog made him a weird kind of underdog, at least if you forget that he initially had a cosign from the biggest rapper in the game. But the most important quality Drake had was his drive. Where most rappers who start with money have trouble motivating themselves, he was, for all his faults, a student of the art and a clear workaholic. And it showed in his music. While his haters multiplied, and so did his fans.

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Lil B doesn't make it easy. He doesn't just troll those souls still uncomfortable with the concept of homosexuality; if anything, backpedaling on his I'm Gay album with a subtitle (I'm Happy) made him seem more like a standard troll and less like the master of head-games he'd presented previously. But his real art is that of the unapologetic weirdo, one who managed to reach a critical mass of Internet attention without ever really producing music that had a chance of crossing over.

There are legitimate reasons to be frustrated. In some corners of the Internet, he became more meme than musician, a lazy comedian's way to get a laugh without making a joke. And some will always be suspicious that a weirdo-rapper's fans are fetishizing his wackiness, rather than genuinely enjoying the art he creates.

But Lil B made some great music, at least for a period, and did push against the boundaries of what people thought possible in hip-hop, even breaking down the physical act of rapping. It can't be said that Lil B didn't deserve criticism; after all, his art was designed to provoke reactions at almost every level. But the haters who wrote off a genuinely unique artist missed some of the possibilities he opened up and questions he helped raise.

In case you didn't realize, Kreayshawn is female, which is one major strike against a hater-free career just off the top. That she also dares to appeal to women—just look at footage of her shows for evidence—is doubling down for haters, many of whom aren't willing to look at a female rapper who isn't Jean Grae (who, in turn, is herself only appreciated by these guys when she can be used as a point of comparison to which other females could never measure up, an unfair situation for everyone involved).

Her record label's inability to capitalize off of Kreay's buzz, releasing her debut album more than a year after her initial impact, has only proven haters right (at least, in their eyes), although marketplace performance is inconsistently applied to fans of underground hip-hop, and hardly even mattered to heads in earlier eras. It doesn't help that her album didn't deliver on the early promise of "Gucci Gucci," but critics were praying on her downfall from the moment she first appeared on the scene.

The fact that she couldn't replicate her initial hit's success was all the proof they needed. Ironically, it's the album's distance from the pop-rap sound of "Gucci Gucci" that makes her music so much less engaging. White Girl Mob cohort Lil Debbie has actually score a few minor creative successes via YouTube hits like "2 Cups" that are closer in spirit to what folks were looking for from Kreay in the first place.

Chief Keef's haters are mad for a plethora of reasons, some justified, many not: His bars aren't strong enough, his success is owed to hipsters and Internet hype, he fulfills a stereotype and glorifies negativity, represents all that is wrong with our inner cities, is stupid, and "makes music for n****s that put their index finger under each word when they read." There's no doubt that his music has an uncomfortably close relationship with violence, albeit one not much different from Wu-Tang, Snoop Dogg or two decades worth of gangster rap.

But it's just a bit over the top. He's a 17-year-old, and while he will make (and has made) his own mistakes, haters have treated him like a one-dimensional caricature from day one. And a lot of the hate is based on perceptions and stereotypes about America's underclass. The media mocked him for wearing the same clothes two days in a row, and Twitter abounds with judgements of his presumed lifestyle.

For months, a false rumor propagated—unsourced, naturally—that Keef has Aspergers syndrom, which was even repeated as "fact" by the editor of a major music website on Twitter. With the arrival of "Love Sosa" (and the increasing perception that Keef may, in fact, not be a one-hit-wonder), convictions have shown some signs of softening, but haters still hate.

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It's probably difficult to be the biggest rapper in the world and not also hold the title of the world's most hated. Anyone even reaching for the crown invites criticism just for being presumptuous. But to actually succeed, to accomplish where so many have failed, invites the most aggressive hate. And Lil Wayne is currently the most successful rapper working; even Jay-Z and Kanye West's collaborative album was dwarfed by sales of The Carter IV, which neared one million copies in one week.

The reasons for the hate are plentiful: Wayne uses Auto-Tune, dresses like a weirdo, releases pop songs, and to many, seemed to will himself into success by declaring himself "the best." But that is, at the end of the day, the nature of hip-hop, and an explanation for why success with a diverse audience is so important. You can't call yourself the greatest if people aren't going, and even then—or, especially then—some people hate.

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Let's get the very first reason Nicki is hip-hop's most-hated out of the way first: She's a successful woman. This much should be obvious. There are a lot of people out there who have zero time for female rappers, even if they have to couch it in criticisms of her appearance from the left (promotes unrealistic images to women!) or right (slut!), her use of over-the-top accents, or her decision to pay attention to her pop audience (as if her hip-hop supporters were keeping the lights on).

This isn't to say that some criticisms aren't legitimate; her career isn't flawless. But it's tough to imagine that anyone else in the industry would be put under the relentless microscope treatment Nicki has received in the past few years.

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