Veteran hip-hop star, Remilekun Abdulkalid Safaru, known by his stage name Reminisce, has stated that rappers are not rated based on their wealth and streaming numbers, but rather on their skills.

Naijaonpoint reports that the ‘Eleniyan’ crooner made this known following the supremacy battle between Nigerian rappers Odumodublvck and Blaqbonez.

While featuring as a guest alongside his colleague, Vector, in a recent episode of the ‘On The Record’ podcast, Reminisce said that regardless of how affluent and influential a rapper is, he can only earn the respect of the hip-hop world through his skills.

According to him, American rapper Kendrick Lamar is widely regarded as the winner of his hip-hop battle with Canadian superstar Drake because of his skill set.

He said, “Hip-hop is the only genre that doesn’t respect numbers or money. No matter how much money you make as a rapper, you can’t buy it [the respect of the Hip-hop world]. That’s one thing I love about Hip-hop. You have to earn it. People have to say, ‘Vector is a good rapper, he’s a legend.’

“If you like see 5 trillion streams, if you like name your album the greatest. Nobody cares. Rap respects pure skills. That’s why Kendrick Lamar is widely adjudged the winner of his hip-hop battle with Canadian superstar Drake. If you look at the margin between Drake and Lamar in terms of commercial, it’s very wide. But because it’s about skill set, which is the primary thing in hip-hop, Lamar won.”