Is Pitbull the best rapper alive?

No. Pitbull is not the best rapper alive. I don't know anybody who could say that with a straight face, except for Pitbull or Jenna Marbles acting like Pitbull. But Pitbull is a good rapper. What's more important is that Pitbull is a very successful rapper. And no other genre of  music respects success as much as rap music, right?

Though many successful rappers might be labelled "pop rappers" by other less successful rappers and disgruntled rap fans, Pitbull, along with Flo Rida, might be the closest thing to a "pop rapper" there is right now. Ever since Pitbull came out with Lil' Jon in 2004 and scored his minor hit, Culo (it peaked at No. 32 on the Billboard charts), Pitbull's music has progressively gotten more dance orientated along with the rest of popular music. With Pitbull's latin background and influence, Pitbull's music always had a dance element to it but when once Pitbull was running with the likes of Lil' Jon and rap mogul, DJ Khaled, Pitbull now runs with dance music heavyhitters RedOne and Afrojack.

Things have definetly changed. There was once a time when if rappers leaned too far left towards the pop market, leaving the *streets behind, their careers became hard to sustain (the perfect example of this might be MC Hammer). Terms like sellout and corny started getting thrown around and it was near  impossible to come back from (MC Hammer tried and failed). Though a shift in the rap landscape to gangster rap in the early 90's was a big factor, even today you see backlash for leaning too far pop toward artists like Nicki Minaj and Wiz Khalifa. But even with that backlash, Nicki and Wiz still remain fan favourites and very very successful.

Pitbull gets no such backlash. While Wiz Khalifa thought it was necessary to write his fans a letter explaining his musical choices and Nicki Minaj walks a fine line dropping pop singles like "Starships" and then street singles like "I Am Your Leader" (featuring hood favourites, Cam'ron and Rick Ross), rap fans no longer care about Pitbull enough to bitch about him. He's long gone and not even on their rap radar.

But Pitbull is a rapper and rappers rap guest verses. You've probably heard a few. We're not far from a time when we couldn't hear a song on the radio without Pitbull.  But rarely did we hear Pitbull with other rappers. Not on their songs and not on his songs. Pitbull has danced his way out of the *game.

Pitbull won't be on anybody's best rappers list. But Pitbull knows what he's doing. He's not looking back. And I'm pretty sure, as convincing as Jenna Marbles' Pitbull was, he's not sad about it. Pitbull's now in full entrepreneur mode so the only list he's probably worried about is Forbes'.

*the streets denotes, the hood, the block, hip hop's core audience
*the game refers to the competitive arena where rappers are connected to each other