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"Looking for the full list of the&amp;#xA0;100 greatest hip-hop songs of all time?&amp;#xA0;Check it out right here.\r\nEditor&amp;apos;s note: To make this list, Rolling Stone asked 33 artists and experts &amp;#x2013; from Rick Rubin to Busta Rhymes &amp;#x2013; to choose their favorite hip-hop tracks, then crunched the numbers. Click to read the full list of voters.\r\nWhat Makes a Great Hip-Hop Song? An Introduction by Ahmir &amp;quot;Questlove&amp;quot; Thompson\r\nI was eight years old when &amp;quot;Rapper&amp;apos;s Delight&amp;quot;\u0003 made its world premiere on Philadelphia radio. It happened at 8:24 p.m. on a Thursday, after a dinner of porgies, string beans and creamed corn. Me and my sister, Donn, were sneaking a listen of the local soul station while washing dishes&amp;#xAD; when an army of percussion and a syncopated Latin piano line came out of my grandma&amp;apos;s JVC clock radio &amp;#x2013; what appeared to be Chic&amp;apos;s &amp;quot;Good Times.&amp;quot; How was I to know that my world would come crashing down in a matter of 5, 4, 3, 2&amp;#x2009;.&amp;#x2009;.&amp;#x2009;.\r\nI said a hip, hop, the hippy to the hippy/To the hip hip hop, you don&amp;apos;t stop.&amp;#x2009;.&amp;#x2009;.&amp;#x2009;.\r\nThe next night, I was prepared, with a prehistoric tape recorder in hand and a black-and-white composition notebook. My boy Aantar became my agent that week, scheduling performances of the song in exchange for snacks or hand-holding with girls in gym class. &amp;quot;Rapper&amp;apos;s Delight&amp;quot; turned this future high school band geek into a superstar for the month of October 1979.\r\nSome of the most powerful hip-hop songs are tracks with elements so simple your brain would explode trying to explain their logic: Take the unstoppable two-note guitar stab in Craig Mack&amp;apos;s &amp;quot;Flava in Ya Ear.&amp;quot; (I hounded the producer, Easy Mo Bee, for 17 years for the secret behind it &amp;#x2013; then wanted to throw someone out the window when I heard how basic it was.) Or the huge sound of the Roland 909 on Schoolly D&amp;apos;s &amp;quot;PSK&amp;quot; &amp;#x2013; an echo that seemed like it came from a church cathedral eight city blocks wide.\r\nThese sounds had incredible power if you grew up with hip-hop: There was the summer I spent trying to match the mix to &amp;quot;The Adventures of Grandmaster Flash on the Wheels of Steel,&amp;quot; note for note, on two Fisher-Price turntables. (My father, unimpressed, told me, &amp;quot;There ain&amp;apos;t a living spinning other people&amp;apos;s music&amp;quot; &amp;#x2013; little did you know, Dad, little did you know.) There were so many times when a song premiere could stop you in your tracks, then become a subject of discussion for the next four hours: in the high school lunchroom when me and Black Thought heard &amp;quot;Wrath of Kane&amp;quot; for the first time, or my first listen to &amp;quot;Fight the Power&amp;quot; &amp;#x2013; it sounded like Pharoah Sanders and Rahsaan Roland Kirk had gotten into a knife fight.\r\nHip-hop gives listeners sets of rules that you follow like the law, only to see them change every five years. I&amp;apos;ve seen my reactions to hip-hop change from age nine (&amp;quot;What the hell was that?&amp;quot;) to age 14 (&amp;quot;That was incredible!&amp;quot;) to age 22 (&amp;quot;Wait&amp;#x2009;.&amp;#x2009;.&amp;#x2009;.&amp;#x2009;are they allowed to do that?&amp;quot;) to age 29 (&amp;quot;It was kinda different when I was a kid&amp;quot;) to now (&amp;quot;What the fuck was that?!&amp;quot;). I&amp;apos;ve seen Vanilla Ice&amp;apos;s &amp;quot;Ice Ice Baby&amp;quot; go from ruling the world to being a musical pariah to being an ironic statement in my DJ set that makes people smile.\r\nThe greatest hip-hop songs have the power to pull energy and excitement and anger and questions and self-doubt and raw emotion out of you. It could be a song that sets your neighborhood on fire (&amp;quot;Rebel Without a Pause&amp;quot;) or a song on your headphones that makes you rethink what hip-hop is (Ultramagnetic MCs&amp;apos; &amp;quot;Ego Trippin&amp;apos;&amp;#x2009;&amp;quot;). The common thread is change. The best hip-hop songs aren&amp;apos;t blueprints &amp;#x2013; they are calls to action, reminders that you can start a revolution in three minutes. Just keep that clock radio on."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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