Antonio Hardy, better known by his stage name Big Daddy Kane, is an American rapper, producer and actor who began his career in 1986 as a member of the Juice Crew. He is widely regarded as one of the most influential and skilled MCs in hip hop. Rolling Stone ranked his song "Ain't No Half-Steppin'" number 25 on its list of The 50 Greatest Hip-Hop Songs of All Time, calling him "a master wordsmith of rap's late-golden age and a huge influence on a generation of MCs".
Big Daddy Kane is regarded as one of the most influential and skilled golden age rappers. MTV put him at No. 7 in their "Greatest MCs of All Time" list. He is placed at No. 4 in Kool Moe Dee's book There's a God on the Mic: The True 50 Greatest MCs. About.com ranked him No. 3 on its list of the "Top 50 MCs of Our Time", and RZA listed him as one of his "Top 5 best MCs". In 2012, The Source ranked him No. 8 on their list of the "Top 50 Lyricists of All Time". AllMusic says "his best material ranks among the finest hip-hop of its era, and his sex-drenched persona was enormously influential on countless future would-be players", and describes him as "an enormously talented battle MC", "one of rap's major talents", refers to his "near-peerless technique" and "first-rate technique and rhyming skills", and says he "had the sheer verbal facility and razor-clean dexterity to ambush any MC and exhilarate anyone who witnessed or heard him perform". Kool Moe Dee describes him as "one of the most imitated emcees ever in the game" and "one of the true greatest emcees ever". Ice-T stated:
"To me, Big Daddy Kane is still today one of the best rappers. I would put Big Daddy Kane against any rapper in a battle. Jay-Z, Nas, Eminem, any of them. I could take his 'Raw' "swagger" from 88 and put it up against any record. Kane is one of the most incredible lyricists... and he will devour you on the mic. I don't want to try to out-rap Big Daddy Kane. Big Daddy Kane can rap circles around cats."
His first two albums are also considered hip hop classics and Rolling Stone says, "he has received consistent critical kudos". In the book Rap-Up: The Ultimate Guide to Hip-Hop and R&B, Cameron and Devin Lazerine say Big Daddy Kane is "widely seen as one of the best lyricists of his time and even today regularly gets name-checked by younger dudes", and music journalist Peter Shapiro says Kane is "perhaps the most complete MC ever". Eminem references Big Daddy Kane in the lyrics to his song "Yellow Brick Road" from his album Encore, saying, "we (Eminem and Proof) was on the same shit, that Big Daddy Kane shit, where compound syllables sound combined", and he quotes the same lines in his book The Way I Am—this illustrates how Big Daddy Kane had an influence on both Eminem's and Proof's rhyme technique.
