I think it's time to start rating rappers by their decade.
Because if you ask if Lloyd Banks was one of the top 10 rappers from 2000-2009 the answer might be yes. But if you're asking if he's top 10 of all time the answer is a definite no.
There's a lot of other MCs that should be rated accordingly.
80s MCs - Rap albums weren't that common until around 87/88 and then Rap artists started dropping albums every year. So if you were to judge groups like Grandmaster Flash & The Furious 5, the Treacherous Three or Cold Crush, you can't really judge them by their albums.
90s MCs - By the 90s the Rap industry had evolved to the point where major labels were pouring millions of dollars into music videos, marketing and promotion. In the mid 90s more than a handful of people went multi-platinum. Double platinum was a realistic goal in the 90s.
00s MCs - By the start of the new millennium file sharing and mp3s became a thing. Also, home computers became common so you didn't have to go to a professional studio to make an album. All you really needed was a computer, the software, and a good microphone. As a result MCs started dropping mixtapes left and right. There's quite a few MCs that made a name for themselves in the 00s decade without any commercial success (e.g. Papoose and Joe Budden)
10s MCs - By 2010 streaming, and downloading started to take the place of record sales. A popular album in the year 2000 was likely to go double platinum (and the same artist would make an album with his crew and go gold; D-12, Flip Mode, St Lunatics, Terror Squad, G - Unit, etc.). Nowadays the most popular Rap artists don't see those kind of numbers. A rapper that releases his album in 2020 is likely to do 80s numbers; gold if he's lucky.
So as far as Lloyd Banks is concerned, if you judge him by his best 5 years 2003-2007 he was top 10 but it would be skewed to compare Lloyd Banks' sales to Kendrick Lamar's sales, because people don't buy albums anymore.
