BY DAN GARCIA

Here at The Early Registration we like to pride ourselves on our music knowledge, to stay polished on our musical expertise our new feature is a little game of musical “6 Degrees”. For those who are unfamiliar, six degrees of separation is the theory that everyone in the world is connected by six or fewer steps, so we are now taking the liberty of connecting musicians by songs and features, who you would never think could be connected. This week our 6˚ piece is in honor of the upcoming 57th Annual Grammy Awards, where we will connect the two most opposite nominees for this year’s “Best Rap Performance” category, Christian rapper Lecrae and of course the always controversial Eminem. To spice things up, we will also include the other rappers in the category (Childish Gambino, Drake, Kendrick Lamar), all in just six steps.

Best Rap Performance Nominees: Lecrae → Eminem

LECRAE → BIG K.R.I.T.

Lecrae is the biggest Christian rapper in the game right now (and it isn’t even close), but he is still relatively unknown to many. He just recently landed on most rap fans’ radars last year when the nominees for the 57th Annual Grammy Awards were released. Naturally, you can expect that he hasn’t worked with a number of big rappers, however a few years ago Lecrae did combine talents with Big K.R.I.T. for Lecrae’s track ‘Mayday’, for his 2012 album Gravity.

BIG K.R.I.T. → TRINIDAD JAMES

A year after his collaboration with Lecrae, Big K.R.I.T. recruited ‘All Gold Everything’ rapper Trinidad James for his song ‘My Trunk’ off his 10th mixtape King Remembered In Time (which is what K.R.I.T. stands for, for those who didn’t know). With a hook like “My trunk pussy pop, them hos down to bop”, it makes sense that K.R.I.T. asked Trinidad James to hop on the track instead of Lecrae.

TRINIDAD JAMES → CHILDISH GAMBINO

In August of 2013, Trinidad James appeared in “Best Rap Performance” nominee Childish Gambino’s short film “Clapping for the Wrong Reasons”. Around the 9:20 mark of the video, Gambino, Chance the Rapper, Trinidad, and producer Stefan Ponce are shown listening to an unreleased collaboration between Gambino, James, and Ponce, which fans have titled ‘So Profound’. So far the song has only been heard by a select few, as well as fans who caught Ponce’s DJ set for Childish Gambino’s Deep Web Tour. Let’s hope that we hear the full version one day.

CHILDISH GAMBINO → KENDRICK LAMAR

Before his critically acclaimed debut album good kid, m.A.A.d. city, Kendrick Lamar rapped over the 2010 Childish Gambino produced track ‘You Know Me’, for his ‘Look Out for Detox’ track. Since then, the two haven’t combined for an official track together, although Gambino has brought out Kendrick (whose song ‘i’ is nominated for this year’s “Best Rap Performance”) for a couple of performances since then. Check out the ‘Look Out for Detox’ video above.

KENDRICK LAMAR → DRAKE

Speaking of King Kendrick’s critically acclaimed good kid, m.A.A.d. city, who better to recruit for your debut LP than Drake? And that is just what Kendrick did, as him and Drizzy combined talents for one of the LP’s stand-out songs, ‘Poetic Justice’. Although the two were great on the same track, nothing was the same since Kendrick’s ‘Control’ verse where he called out Drake (among other top rappers). We may see who was better this year though, as “i” and Drake’s “0 to 100” are both up for the “Best Rap Performance” category on Sunday.

DRAKE → EMINEM

It seems like Drake has worked with almost everyone already, including about a million songs with his label-mate and mentor Lil Wayne. One of the many Lil Wayne collaborations had a lot more than just a feature from Weezy, rather Drake’s track ‘Forever’ (for the Lebron Jame’s movie “More Than a Game”) also had verses from rap gods Kanye West and “Best Rap Performance” nominee Eminem. Check out the official video for ‘Forever’, above.

And there we have it, Christian rapper Lecrae is connected to all other fellow “Best Rap Performance” nominees, even Eminem, the guy who made a song about killing his ex. Be sure to Tweet us suggestions of who we should connect next time (@TheEarlyReg).