Ranking the 12 Best Verses From the BET Hip-Hop Awards Cyphers

Image via Complex Original

Best Line: "Every whip in my garage laced/Bait the cops into a car chase/keep the thing in a guitar case."

Action mocks soft hands and leather pants before dropping a fairly typical verse of nonsequiters, but it's enough to stand apart from the rest of his competition.

[Link]

Best Line: "Hold up, this gettin' outta hand/Cuz in a year, I'm gonna be saying I'm not her man, doing the you-are-not-the-father dance."

Jon Connor's freestyle was pretty strong, mixing wrestling references to Andre the Giant and Daniel Bryan, offhand mentions of his crush on Rita Ora (can't believe no one made another "Hi Rihanna" joke this year), and joking about the "You are the not the father dance." Verse closes with a boast about his recent Aftermath signing.

[Link]

Best Line: "K-i-n-g, shout out to tip, the only rapper in this shit, no disrespect to Nick."

Why did Nelly's verse feel like the only one that was maybe actually freestyled? He kicked a familiar old school flow and bragged about being "Above the rim before Dwayne could crawl." It's refreshing to hear someone rap in a steady way that is more concerned with saying something listeners remember rather than showing off complicated rhyme techniques.

[Link]

Best Line: "This is Huey Newtown with the uzi shootin'/The trill Martin Luther finna spark the ruger."

There's some serious apples and oranges comparisons in these cyphers, and none more so than comparing the A$AP Mob's song (including a chorus) with, say, Slaughterhouse or TDE's hyperkinetic rapper technique show-out moments. While other Mob moments seem like half-finished thoughts, A$AP Rocky's verse goes full-on Spike Lee, repping ethnic slurs before calling himself the "trill Martin Luther King." The verse is uncharacteristically political, if by political we mean packed with references to black leaders and a request that white America suck his dick.

[Link]

Best Line: "It's Ab-Soul, gimmie the loot, I'm the skinny Biggie/In New York City with Puffy puffin' the sticky."

Ab-Soul's opening lines are some of the strongest, even if his more placid delivery slightly undercuts the confidence of his writing. He goes from cocky to introspective and back again.

[Link]

Best Line: "They see how the car rollin'/Gold seven and the Kar-dash crack like Lamar Odom."

Aside from a tired line about rappers wearing dresses, Joell's opening bars on the Slaughterhouse freestyle were strong, with lines about sending snapbacks flying, an extended play on the word "red," and a "car-dash" "Kardashian" gag.

[Link]

Best Line: "Kimmie got 'em sweatin like Trinidad."

Lil Kim definitely sounds like she's doing a little Nicki Minaj imitation, which is like a snake eating its own tail because of how much Minaj owes to her stylistically. But it's still a standout verse, and manages to steal the spotlight from Tiffany Foxx, who just narrowly missed making this top ten. Sometimes, mastery beats "promising."

[Link]

Best Line: "I write whatever, fuck it if I let Nas down."

Rittz had the advantage of coming after the Italian dude, so everyone was waiting for the session to switch back into English. But he still had some pretty flawless double-time bars and some funny lines about how just because you're rapping like you're mad doesn't mean you're actually going off.

[Link]

Best Line: "It's Top Dawg, we running rap/Wack rappers feline, reason we don't run with cats."

Jay Rock was the only rapper in any of the cyphers that seemed to really have a visceral, gritty gangster panache, which made his bars stand out more than almost anyone else in his cypher, and definitely put him in the top tier of rappers overall.

[Link]

Best Line: "Y'all brought knives to a motherfuckin' Cannon-fight."

What happened to rap that a TV star married to Mariah Carey had the hottest punchlines in all the cyphers? One by one he knocked 'em out. The Real Husbands of Hollywood cypher was supposed to be a joke (and Kevin "Chocolate Drop" Hart played that up with a funny parody of rapper personas) but it captured the sense of humor and fun missing from a lot of the more staid, technically proficient but mostly dry freestyles from other artists.

[Link]

Best Line: "Ahead of my time, get you hit now from a future hook."

"I'm quick on my feet, I can moonwalk sideways." This verse is full of runner-up best lines, easily a standout on both the Shady freestyle and in the cyphers more broadly. 

[Link]

Best Line: "And nothing's been the same since they dropped 'Control'/And tucked a sensitive rapper back in his pajama clothes."

It's tempting to act the contrarian about Kendrick Lamar. Try finding a hip-hop head who isn't riding for him. 

But even the folks who want to see him fail can't deny that he's on top of his game right now. In the cypher this year, he still raps in a way that is intricate without being boring, exciting without losing its artfulness, and just plain unexpected. He goes for a hi-five, which would be gimmicky in another rapper's hands (pun intended) but actually adds levity to his otherwise serious bars. There are multiple quote-worthy moments. There's an effortlessness that suggests he just thinks about what he's doing a lot more than the average MC. He thinks in multiple dimensions, where straight-up lyrical cats are linear; he has depth where those inspired by him just imitate the framework of it.

Hey, what do you know, another blurb exalting Kendrick Lamar.

[Link]