First impressions, they say, are everything. In the blink of an eye, the human brain fires off a series of signals after receiving information that—time and time again—studies have shown are harder to change the more time passes after it.
To that end, a first line in rap might just be the first line. But it's always so much more. Not just the beginning of a song, but for the ones that really count, the beginning of a legacy: For a song, for an artist, for an entire body of work or era of a genre. And you only have, really, only one line to get that first impression right. For the artists who did that, their first moments on a track were really more than just first impressions, but the beginning and end of a micro-legacy that usually results in more than just the start of a song, but the start of a much larger place in history, too.
These are The 100 Best Opening Lines in Rap History: 50 - 1.
Written by Kathy Iandoli, David Drake, and Foster Kamer.
[PREVIOUSLY: The 100 Best Opening Lines in Rap History: 100 - 51]
LIKE COMPLEX MUSIC ON FACEBOOK