long post ahead
I'll preface this by saying Phonte is the greatest, most slept on MC not named Black Thought. That being said I can't agree with the article. Phonte poses no threat to Kanye or especially Drake. Phonte appeals to a completely different audience than Drake, and even if they appeared on a record and Phonte killed him, no one would care. Phonte is overweight, past 30, and quite a calm/mature personality. The people who proclaim Drake as the best rapper alive would simply dismiss Phonte as some underground old cat who hasn't sold records.
I'd also disagree with the general idea that Eminem killing Jay-Z on Renegade had much lasting effect on hip hop. Mainstream hip hop has been dominated by ensemble, feature heavy songs for years. Consider some of the biggest rap songs of the last couple years:
A quick glance at hip hop charts will show multiple songs featuring either Lil Wayne, Drake, or Rick Ross - basically, three of the biggest rappers in the genre.
These are cases of rappers battling over demographics rather than proving who's the best rapper. Eminem is generally considered to have killed everyone on Forever - hell, Drake even admitted it. But that doesn't stop artists from appearing on the same record to maximize radio play and iTunes downloads.
In short, rap today is not really focused on who is the best, it's about who is the hottest. If I had to point to an example of an actual momentous record that somewhat compares to Renegade, I'd go with Hello Brooklyn:
When word came out that Jay and Wayne were going to do a song together, anticipation was high for a lyrical battle to determine who was truly better (lol). But the song isn't lyrical at all, and only serves to show how poor of a rapper Wayne is. It's a bad song, and Jay "killed" Wayne simply by showing up. IMO the same thing happened shortly afterward on Kanye's third album, where Wayne dropped another lackluster verse that was widely criticized.
Big Daddy Kane never did a track with Rakim, or KRS-One. Even in the early 90s there weren't nearly as many major collabos as there are today; Biggie and 2pac both did tracks with Method Man. Wu Tang only worked with Nas and Mobb Deep. Back then rappers were more concerned with putting their homies on, which resulted in some meh posse cuts (example: all those lackluster Outlawz features on classic 2pac songs). Biggie did tracks with Jay-Z, as both were Brooklyn dudes. But in general the biggest rappers focused solely on their own brand.
Collabos in the mid to late 90s were often more aggressive competitions instead of joint ventures to get money. On the following track, Jay-Z purposely demanded his verse come before DMX's so he could throw a subliminal diss in his first line
In 95 Jay and DMX (and Ja Rule) were up and coming rappers, and both attacked the track with pure intention to crush the competition and make names for themselves. IMO that competitive spirit is missing in much of hip hop today. I'm not saying the 90s (or 80s) weren't about money, but today rappers just jump from trend to trend and design albums intended to sell individual, demographic targeted songs on iTunes. In rock, bands were constantly trying to match or surpass genius - whether they were trying to reach Jimi Hendrix or Dylan or St. Pepper or whatever. Likewise in the 80s and 90s there was this same competition in hip hop. Pete Rock would re-do beats after hearing DJ Premier's work; Illmatic challenged Common to make Resurrection; The Chronic made east coast producers take notes.
Today hip hop is just in the next man's pocket. Last year after Rick Ross dropped BMF, everyone started hitting up the producer asking for a beat that sounded like it. That spawned a million similar sounding songs attempting to capture BMF's energy. This isn't a new phenomena in rap (remember all the soul sample/loop imitators in the early 2000s?), in fact it's been a staple of many genres for years but it just feels more ridiculous today imo.
