Annually MTV puts out their ‘Hottest MCs in The Game’ poll, giving Hip-Hip enthusiast the ability to vote for the MC that they think is the best out. This years nominees consist of 30 emcees including the likes of Redman, Young Jeezy, Kid Cudi, Rick Ross, and Raekwon of Wu-Tang. Previous years have seen the rappers you would expect leading the polls such as, Jay-Z, Kanye, Weezy. However this year sees the aforementioned MCs recieveing less than 5% of the vote apiece!

According to the poll 50 Cent and Joe Budden are the ‘Hottest MCs in the Game’ recieving a quarter of the vote each. Now, 50 Cent is not much of a surprise considering his recent mixtapes (War Angel LP and Forever King) and singles off of his upcoming fifth studio albumBefore I Self Destruct, which have recieve plenty of radio play. However, Joe Budden’s success in the poll comes as a suprise to most people as he hasn’t had much commercial success since his singles “Pump it Up” and “Fire”.

True Hip-Hop heads know that Joe Budden has been putting in A LOT of work since his intial debut in 2003. Joey has released several solo mixtapes over the years, and recently co-released the debut self-titled Slaughterhouse group album. As well, Budden has maintained his Hip-Hop relevance through his ‘Joe Budden TV’ video blog. The average Hip-Hop listener though, who only tunes into the radio and is oblivious to the mixtape circuit wouldn’t know about Joe’s underground buzz and likely disagree with his neck and neck position with 50 Cent in the voting results.
This is why its good that an underdog like Joe Budden is being seen as equal to a rap superstar like 50 Cent in the eyes of the fans. It shows that Joey’s video blogging, and underground mixtape success has not gone unnoticed.

The voting ends August 24th, but judging from the results thus far its either going to be Buddens or Fif. One thing is for sure, Kanye’s measly 2% ranking will hurt his ‘ego’.

Vote for yourself here: http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1618501/20090811/50_cent.jhtml

-Khari Clarke