Same era. Same city. Same Dungeon Family.

Completely different ideas about what hip hop should do.

Can you pick an Outkast track that CeeLo didn't eat on? We couldn't. And that tells you everything about this debate.

Today on Grown Man Bars, Chad and Big Absoloot put Goodie Mob and Outkast head to head. Nine rounds. Nine categories. No ties. No feelings.

Two Atlanta legends. One winner.

You decide round by round.

Grown Man Bars — hip hop debate for grown ups. Two Gen X former rappers. No scripts. No safe takes. New episodes every Tuesday.

00:00 The Open

00:47 Round 1 | The Arrival | Goodie Mob

01:30 Round 2 | The Street Record | Goodie Mob

02:31 Round 2 | The Street Record | Outkast

03:31 Round 3 | The Hit Record | Outkast

04:56 Round 3 | The Hit Record | Goodie Mob

05:59 Round 4 | The Feature Master | Goodie Mob

06:59 Round 4 | The Feature Master | Outkast

07:51 Round 5 | The Bar Fest | Outkast

10:06 Round 6 | The Club Smash | Goodie Mob

11:00 Round 6 | The Club Smash | Outkast

12:01 Round 7 | The Story Record | Outkast

12:42 Round 7 | The Story Record | Goodie Mob

13:14 Round 8 | The Cultural Moment | Goodie Mob

14:02 Round 8 | The Cultural Moment | Outkast

15:16 Round 9 | The Modern Test | Outkast

16:56 Round 9 | The Cultural Moment | Goodie Mob

Some fans got the '90s wrong. Not a little wrong—wrong wrong.

Tonight on Grown Man Bars, Chad and Big Absoloot are breaking it down and fixing the 90s hip hop timeline. We’re digging into the most underrated rappers of the 90s—the technicians who carried the era and the legends you forgot to respect.

Ten MCs. Five categories. Two lists. We didn't coordinate the picks—just two Gen X former rappers breaking down the culture.

What we're breaking down:

• The Overlooked Technician: Having the skill, but being buried by proximity to a legend.

• The Victim: Label politics, bad timing, and when "life be lifin'."

• The Influencer: The architects who built the blueprint your favorite rappers used to get famous.

• The Body of Work: Independent titans with catalogs that speak for themselves.

• The Most Underrated: The greatest "unfinished sentences" in hip hop history.

Drop a comment on the video version or hit us up—who did the culture do the dirtiest?

00:00 The Open

00:22 The Intro

00:46 Round 5 | The Overlooked Technician | Chad's Pick

02:31 Round 5 | The Overlooked Technician | BA's Pick

04:21 Round 4 | The Victim | Chad's Pick

05:46 Round 4 | The Victim | BA's Pick

08:00 Round 3 | The Influencer | Chad's Pick

09:48 Round 3 | The Influencer | BA's Pick

11:38 Round 2 | The Body of Work | Chad's Pick

12:44 Round 2 | The Body of Work | BA's Pick

14:38 Round 1 | The Most Underrated | Chad's Pick

16:15 Round 1 | The Most Underrated | BA's Pick

18:17 The Outro

GMB RANKING ROOM: DISCOGRAPHY & METADATA

Round 5 | West Coast Metadata

• Mack 10 (1995), Based on a True Story (1997), The Recipe (1998)

• Kizz My Black Azz (1992), Shock of the Hour (1993), The Villain in Black (1996)

Round 4 | Bad Boy & Beef Metadata

• Can-I-Bus (1998), 2000 B.C. (2000)

• Project: Funk da World (1994), Operation: Get Down (1997)

Round 3 | Conscious & L.A. Metadata

• Can I Borrow a Dollar? (1992), Resurrection (1994), One Day It'll All Make Sense (1997)

• Act a Fool (1988), At Your Own Risk (1990), Tha Triflin' Album (1993)

Round 2 | Independent & SPC Metadata

• No Mercy (1993), Danger Zone (1995), Hidden Agenda (1998)

• The Calm Before the Storm (1999), The Worst (1999)

Round 1 | Rawkus & Ruthless Metadata

• Internal Affairs (1999), Stress: The Extinction Agenda (1994)

• No One Can Do It Better (1989), Helter Skelter (1996)

🎙️ Grown Man Bars — hip hop debate for grown ups. Two Gen X former rappers. No scripts. No safe takes. New episodes every Tuesday.

Metadata (The Algorithm Fuel)

After Biggie and Pac were gone, hip hop didn't go soft. It got polished. Today on Grown Man Bars, Chad and Big Absoloot break down DMX and Tupac Shakur — two of the most intense forces to ever touch a microphone in 90s rap history.

Not the charts. What they actually meant. And what burning that hot cost both of them.

DMX threw water on his face and hit the street. That's exactly what 1998 hip hop needed.

This That and the Third breaks it down three ways.

The THIS — Tupac Shakur was the greatest emotional communicator rap music has ever seen. Not just a rapper. A poet. An advocate. A man who made the street feel seen.

The THAT — DMX dropped two nuclear classic albums in the same year. 1998. Nobody had done it before. Nobody has done it since. But explosions don't sustain.

The THIRD — Some artists are stars. They burn steady for a long time. Some are meteors. They flash brighter than anything else and then they're gone. DMX and 2Pac were the meteor moment 90s rap required.

Is it about the bars or about moving the people? Tell us where we got it wrong.

Grown Man Bars — hip hop debate for grown ups. Two Gen X former rappers. No scripts. No safe takes. New episodes every Tuesday.

00:00 The Open

00:27 The Stakes

00:59 The THIS: 2pac

01:50 The This: DMX

03:09 The That: Tupac

04:23 The That: DMX

06:15 The Third: What All This Means

11:18 The Comment of the Week

11:53 The Outro