Hip Hop has always celebrated the rare artists who can master both the boards and the booth. While most producers are content to shape soundscapes for others, a select few have proven they can step up to the mic and match (or even outshine) the rappers they collaborate with. Their dual talents give them a unique edge: When you’re building the beat and spitting the bars, you’re controlling every layer of the song’s DNA.

Of course, there’s a group of multi-hyphenates who don’t quite fit this particular list. Legends like J. Cole, Q-Tip, Skepta, El-P, MF DOOM, and Tyler, The Creator were recognized as rappers and producers in near-equal measure from the very beginning, making it hard to separate which identity came first. Their names deserve flowers for embodying the producer-rapper duality at the highest level, but the focus here is on those who were first revered for their production and later proved their pen was just as sharp.

From Pete Rock’s soulful touch to Hit-Boy’s chart-dominating run, these are the producers who arguably rap as well as, if not better than, their peers. They remind us that the best music often comes from those who can flip the beat and then body it, all in one breath.

1. Kanye West

Notable bars: “Hood phenomenon, the LeBron of rhyme, hard to be humble when you stunting on a jumbotron”

2. Pharrell Williams

Notable bars: “I bought that white 550, so white that the coke heads just might try sniff, or ordered the Phantom coupe, that's smoke pipe grey, and the interior was like crack rock beige”

3. RZA

Notable bars: “I stand tall like buildings on Van Dyke’s, all mics, beats strike like a noisy 4 train late night, jakes got New York feeling like we outta state, can’t smoke a bone in the staircase without gettin’ chased”

4. Pete Rock

Notable bars: “It’s on, at any second with the high stakes drama, the game's teeth sharp like piranhas, there’s a million style biters who try to create, make no mistake, real n**gas challenge the fake”

5. Black Milk

Notable bars: “For every pair of lines I spit, I leave you paralyzed and bent, so clear a path if you not parallel to my paragraphs, apparently, if they say I'm better than you, there’s no reason for me to put myself on the pedestal”

6. Hit-Boy

Notable bars: “When you move how you wanna move, you gon’ make somebody mad, my n**ga, I’m the best student Kanye ever had, fell out with certain n**gas fast ‘cause I put s**t on blast”

7. The Alchemist

Notable bars: “My leather coat was draggin’ in the dirt, I got buff from baggaging the work, I’m at thе table, I’m having a dessert, three-piece suit with the napkin in the shirt”

8. Ovrkast.

Notable bars: “First off, grind hard, never work soft, still a man, first thought, ready when it hit the ceiling fan, know my pen got the perks on it, first sonnet, ready now, why I perch on it?”

9. Large Professor

Notable bars: “You don't know the pain I feel when I see you smilin’, and when I roll up, you start wildin’, so I front like everything’s hunky-dory, but it's a whole different story”

10. Diamond D

Notable bars: “I’m flippin’ on n**gas like treys of cracks, my raps react on your cardiac like a heart attack, some n**gas front for stunts, who want to take a puff of the blunt and play a n**ga like a chump?”

11. Madlib

Notable bars: “Everywhere is the same, different people, different places, different spaces, different races, but everbody is still playin’ them same games, it got so bad I started doin’ the same thing”

12. J Dilla

Notable bars: “Give it up for the most slept on since Pepto-Bis, when TimeWarner let go Prince”

13. Erick Sermon

Notable bars: “Who want it? Come and see me, like 112, and I’ll rock that bell with Fox and L, E-Dub, Mr. Excitement, right, the poltergeist of rap, so come to the light”