Sometimes the most obvious and predictable answer is the right one: Kendrick Lamar is the best rapper alive. If there was any conflict, it was amicably resolved sometime around 11 PM on a Sunday night on the main stage at America's biggest festival in this apocalyptic year of our lord(e), 2017.The "best rapper alive" isn't a lifetime title. As Biggie explained and tragically embodied, your reign on the top can be short like leprechauns. The position can be vacant for years, as it was in the window between Wayne and Kendrick. Influence and popularity are important but only part of the equation. Streaming numbers, packed pop up shops, and charisma can only take you so far. You can't win the Electoral College but lose the popular vote. You can be YG, arguably the best album artist of your generation, but so regionally specific that your music gets mangled in translation. You can be Young Thug, bending the English language and esoteric rhythms to your supervillainous will, but unable to convince closed minded conservatives that you're doing anything but mumbling.This is a matter of souls and minds, virtuosic skill and marrow-splitting substance, the ability to summon that supernatural condition that wherever you're performing is the heartbeat of the universe and everything else is irrelevant. It's when you're able to chant, "This What God Feel Like" from your new song, "GOD." and induce chills in the crowd, who nod their heads in stunned disbelief, and silently understand this is as close as anyone is going to get tonight.Read more on Noisey