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MTV T.R.U. Life: The REAL 10 Hottest MCs in the Game

MTV has been steady picking rap’s 10 hottest MCs since 2007 and, when it comes to the completely arbitrary metric of hottest-ness, they’re usually more right than wrong. But their criteria are slanted towards the academic and traditional, giving too much weight to too-big-to-fail popularity (ruh!) and propping up the platinum establishment. The list has made waves this week after catching the ire of Kanye West, who took off his Yeti suit just long enough to call up Hot 97 to complain about being dropped to No. 7. Of course, the question that no one broached was whether Kanye even deserved to be on a list of people making moves in early 2013. SPIN offers our own list of the real 10 hottest MCs, not as a correction but to broaden the list’s scope and sharpen its focus, to give greater weight to the artists who will actually represent the sound and feel of now. Plus, we bought Kanye his first computer. JORDAN SARGENT