Despite the teasing he receives online and the Fyre Fest controversies that haunt him, Ja Rule’s legacy in hip-hop is worth celebrating. The New Yorker helped start the wave of melodic rappers and while his pop culture moments have caused Ja to be the butt of teasing from fans, his classics are undeniably favorites.

Recently, Ja Rule spoke with The breakfast club and talked about his career and the business moves he’s made in recent years, but like many other rappers, he was asked who he would place on his Mount Rushmore.

Ja acknowledged that naming four artists isn’t easy because there are generations and eras of rapping, but he quickly named three: Jay-Z, Tupac Shakur and The Notorious BIG. The fourth was harder to name, but Ja decided to take things back to an earlier era of Hip Hop.

“Either Big Daddy Kane or Rakim or [KRS One] because of what they did for the culture and what they meant for the culture,” he said. “And what Rakim was for a Nas, you see what I’m saying? What KRS was to a whole generation of rappers… We never put the women in there… MC Lyte, Queen Latifah, Salt-N-Pepa.”

“They’re the reason other women took a microphone, period. How can you leave them off? You have to [pick] one of them and put them there. Ja Rule would also go on to brag about Lil Kim’s impact. Check out the interview below.