With his Top 5 Dead Or Alive album scheduled for release on November 20, Yonkers, New York rapper Jadakiss was asked to share his picks for top five rappers, during ITCHY HOUSE FILMS’ “The Cutting Room” series.

Jada didn’t offer any particular ranking, but did reveal that his top five rappers consists of The Notorious B.I.G., Jay Z, Nas, Styles P, and DMX. He also expressed his gratefulness at being one of the artists continuously mentioned in the top five debate.

“For one, just for your name to be in the discussion is a pleasure,” Jadakiss said. “Because it’s a million rappers, a billion. And more than 98.2 percent of them would never be in the discussion. And then another thing that makes you and puts me where I’m at is I can stay here and endure. I love the discussion. You gotta be able to take it and then transform that into something…No specific order. Nah, you can’t put it in an order. Big, Hov, Nas, Styles, X.”

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At one point, Jadakiss was asked what stopped him from reaching the fame of an artist like Jay Z.

“I might be too real,” he said. “For whatever that means. They don’t really want to let real niggas get all the way in. We gotta sneak in. They ain’t gonna just—It ain’t gonna be that easy of a task for niggas like us. Cause they know what we gonna do if we was to get in a position like that.”

Jadakiss later revealed how big of an impact meeting Biggie and having the late rapper cosign his rhymes was.

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“But then after meeting Big—Cause we used to just be in the crib, smoking and writing rhymes that we wanted Big to hear,” Jadakiss said. “So, then after we got the deal on Bad Boy and we was able to get next to him and chop it up with him, that just put the battery in niggas’ back…For the most part, that was it. Me and Big, and him like ‘Yo, y’all niggas nice.’ That just put me somewhere else with it. And I started just keeping his legacy and my legacy still going til they lower me in the ground.”

For additional Jadakiss coverage, watch the following DX Daily: