Kanye West slams his MC ranking

Kanye West is furious he's only made number seven on a best MCs list, blaming the placement on people who dislike "Kanye in a kilt". Every year MTV releases its Hottest MCs in the Game rundown, which sees Kanye sitting behind Big Sean at number six and Drake at five this year. The top four rappers are yet to be released, although Kanye has already taken issue with the rundown.

He believes the people who compiled the list don't know enough about the hip-hop game. He is adamant they didn't concentrate on his music, instead took other areas of his life into account. The star believes his image overhaul from preppy to high fashion has annoyed some people.

"Yeah, number seven bothers me. I think that [Lil] Wayne is the number one rapper in the world," he told radio station Hot 97.

"What happens is with them, with these types of judges and people who review it, when you come in, I had like the pink polo and the backpack and I'm checkin' all the boxes of that Tribe Called Quest era... so they wanna champion it. They don't like Givenchy Kanye. They don't like Kanye in a kilt. They don't like Kanye in a relationship."

The star believes Jay-Z and Eminem are two of the greatest rappers the world has ever seen, so should make it to the top of the list.

Kanye would have put himself in the top five and blames his placement on the compilation record Cruel Summer. The album featured work by artists on the GOOD Music record label and wasn't a hit with critics, although it did spawn several big singles such as Clique.

The rapper added that if he'd been helming the rundown he would have looked at individual verses created by hip-hop stars. Those with clever lyrics would have triumphed, with Kanye pointing out how proud he is of his track Cold.

He hit the headlines when the song leaked as it contains a reference to Kris Humphries, the basketball player married to Kanye's girlfriend Kim Kardashian for 72 days in 2011.

Kris plays for the Brooklyn Nets, the team owned by Kanye's friend Jay-Z.

"I don't think [the list is] them really going bar for bar. I said, 'Lucky I ain't had Jay drop him from the team,' [in my track.] Ain't no bar, ain't no bar in the entire past 12 months that's hotter than that bar. That's one bar! I come from this battle rap," he said.