Best MC: New York

I'm a hip hop head.  So I figured I would do something different here.  I was listening to some music last night and I started to notice that different cities have different sounds.  With that, the mc's have different individual sounds.  So I decided to speak on my favorites from the major cities in hip hop.  Of course I have to start with the birthplace of hip hop.  New York has plenty of names that have to be put up for consideration.  Kool G. Rap, Rakim, KRS-1 and so many other old school mc's can be on the list, but I come a little bit after that era so my list will start with people who came after them.  There are still quite a few names that can be listed here from Jay-Z, Jadakiss, Ghostface, so forth and so on.  But my list begins and ends with Nas.  To me, Nas is the dopest mc ever.  From the moment I heard him, there was something different about him.  I was only about eleven so I really wasn't supposed to be listening to music like his.  I still remember my brother buying Illmatic and me and him sneaking around to listen to it.  That was the first true hip hop album that we bought.  That opened the floodgates.  The first song that I ever heard from him was "It ain't hard to tell."  He was a breath of fresh air from what was coming out at the time.  In a sense there was so much of what I would call clown rap or comedy rap.  Then Nas came and brought back lyricism.  Everything about him was fresh.  His voice, vocabulary, and storytelling were excellent.  You could close your eyes and see exactly what he was saying.  Illmatic is probably the best hip hop album ever.  After that the expectations were sky high for him.  There are some, including my brother, who have soured on him because of his beat selection.  I admit that some of his choices have been poor, but it doesn't take away from what he says on the songs.  He's far and away the best lyricist, even though he doesn't show his best quality of storytelling as much as he once did.  Every album he has ever put out has a moment of awe in it somewhere.  Even the ones that some see as subpar have one.  I think he can do whatever he wants to in that booth.  He has been mentioned by some of the best mc's as their favorite mc.  His influence can be heard in almost ever mc doing it now.  He will never get the credit he deserves because his albums no longer make any attempts at selling high numbers.  He is beyond that and I think that the infamous battle with Jay-Z awakened Nas.  Since then he has been on fire.  So for me Nas is the G.O.A.T.