When it became clear, after 2009’s Til the Casket Drops, that the Clipse were likely to go on indefinite hiatus, Pusha was thrown a life raft in the form of an invitation to Hawaii to work on Kanye West’s My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. And while his contributions to that record (and his guest turn on “Runaway” in particular) helped carve an identity distinct from his brother’s, the early phase of Pusha’s solo career was decidedly uneven. But in 2018, when Kanye began professing an affinity for Donald Trump and then announced that most of the artists on his G.O.O.D. Music roster would be releasing seven-song albums recorded in Wyoming, it was Pusha—and Pusha alone—who was able to leverage that pandemonium to his advantage. His installment of the Jackson Hole project, Daytona, is razor-toothed, and distills his entire creative enterprise (the visceral detail in his drug wholesaling anecdotes, but also the paranoia and regret that began to cloud his judgment) into a concentrated burst. All of this would be enough to make ’18 one of the best years of his career. What puts it over the top is “The Story of Adidon.” Reasonable people can argue over which diss song is the greatest of all time, but never before had one rapper exposed the existence of another’s hidden child. He got married, too—to a woman named Virginia. 

What happened next: I once saw Pusha give a talk in Berlin in which he explained, with some pride, that he makes the same album over and over, refining his craft within narrow parameters. While that approach means he’s only likely to make huge commercial leaps when outside circumstances conspire, it also means the larger process ticks along undeterred. He’s released one album since then, 2022’s It’s Almost Dry, which recalls the sonically adventurous middle period of his Clipse work, but finds him tripling- and quadrupling-down on his pet themes. The air of principled living he’s cultivated has insulated him from Kanye’s downfall—and Drake’s continued pop-chart dominance.

Pusha-T Remains an Enigma After His Biggest Year Yet

By Rob Harvilla • Dec. 13, 2018 • 6 min read

Pusha-T Remains an Enigma After His Biggest Year Yet

By Rob Harvilla • Dec. 13, 2018 • 6 min read

Year in Review

Pusha-T Remains an Enigma After His Biggest Year Yet

By Rob Harvilla • Dec. 13, 2018 • 6 min read

In a genre that had spent so much of its early lifespan focused on what’s been made on the East and West coasts of America, the South has always had something to say. And while folks have always been checking out what’s come out from the South, it took T.I. calling himself the “King of the South” to truly help shift the culture. If folks didn’t believe Tip’s claims of being the heir to the throne of rap in the Southern states, he proved it in 2006, when his voice stayed in rotation not just in the South, but across the country. T.I. started 2006 strong, releasing the lead single from his fourth album, King, “What You Know,” an anthemic cut detailing how he got to where he is while questioning if you were as real as he. That song ended up winning the ​​Best Rap Solo Performance Grammy. (“What You Know” was also used to promote T.I.’s other 2006 project, his debut acting gig in the now-cult hood classic ATL. The movie was supposed to have a soundtrack album, but that ended up becoming what we now know as King.) That March, Young Dro dropped “Shoulder Lean,” which went double platinum, no doubt assisted by Tip’s appearance. The Crystal Waters–flipping “Why You Wanna” may have only gone gold, but it showcased how easy it was for T.I. to slip into a slinkier, more radio-friendly groove without losing his cool. This makes perfect sense when you realize that in October 2006, Justin Timberlake released his T.I. collaboration “My Love,” taken from JT’s quadruple-platinum album FutureSex/LoveSounds. On a song drenched in the kind of 8-bit cyber funk that Timbaland can cook up, T.I. was a grounding force, tethering an otherworldly song at least partly to our reality. 

What happened next: T.I. still had fire in the tank; his biggest solo hit, “Whatever You Like,” dropped in 2008. Tip has, however, dealt with a number of legal issues, including being sued (along with his wife, Tiny) in January 2024 for the reported drugging and sexual assault of a woman in a Los Angeles hotel room in 2005. (T.I. and Tiny requested for the lawsuit to be dismissed back in June, and that request was granted this August.)

After the Game signed to Interscope, he sat on the shelf for more than a year; this makes sense, because he couldn’t really rap. By the time The Documentary came out, in January 2005, he was still a clumsy vocalist and a remarkably addled writer. But that LP is one of the most staggering collections of beats assembled in the 2000s, and the myth machine whirred to life, casting him as the successor to Dr. Dre and Tupac at once. He was almost instantly an A-list star—and finally a priority to his label, with Jimmy Iovine reportedly leaning on 50 Cent to cannibalize and delay his sophomore album to provide Game with hits. Shortly after The Documentary dropped, though, the tension between the two MCs became unbearable: After 50 kicked Game out of G-Unit, their respective entourages got into a shoot-out outside Hot 97. A brief reconciliation was abandoned, and Game dropped “300 Bars n Runnin,” a marathon diss song that aired grievances with innumerable rappers. A triumph of the mediocre, but an undeniable one. 

What happened next: The Game’s relationship with Aftermath evaporated in embarrassing fashion: Doctor’s Advocate, despite the name, didn’t feature a single beat from Dr. Dre. Game has remained a prominent artist but has developed some deeply embarrassing tendencies, imitating his collaborators on songs and inserting himself into virtually every current event in the rap world.

The beauty of Cardi B in 2018 was that many people didn’t expect someone like her to rise to fame. To that point, she was simply the most memorable personality from Season 6 of Love & Hip Hop: New York, not an MC ready to take over the genre. Born Belcalis Marlenis Almánzar, Cardi owned a personality too infectious to keep out of the limelight, and as hip-hop opened up as a route to even bigger stardom for influencers, it was no surprise that Cardi started releasing mixtapes in the late 2010s. Soon after the release of her second project, 2017’s Gangsta Bitch Music, Vol. 2, Atlantic Records signed her to a deal, building her rep with a number of features (including the controversy surrounding her appearance on Migos’s “MotorSport” alongside Nicki Minaj), as well as her certified diamond single “Bodak Yellow,” which liberally borrowed Kodak Black’s flow from his “No Flockin Freestyle”—normally a major foul in hip-hop, but with the way the game had changed from the “good ol’ days” to the 2010s, interpolating flows is now just par for the course. What’s funny is that Cardi was far from done; January 2018 kicked off with Bruno Mars helping Cardi become the first female rapper with five top-10 singles on the Billboard Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart at the same time. Invasion of Privacy, her debut album, was released in April 2018, debuting at no. 1 and garnering enough buzz that she ended up being in a position to both reveal her pregnancy on Saturday Night Live and co-host The Tonight Show. Cardi still wasn’t done, though; the J Balvin and Bad Bunny–assisted “I Like It” hit no. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 in July, and her Maroon 5 collaboration “Girls Like You” did the same. By the end of the year, every song on Invasion of Privacy had gone gold (at least), and she even made the Time 100. All of that for the woman who before this may have been remembered most as the person yelling “WHAT WAS THE REASON!?” during a reunion show.

What happened next: A Grammy win, another Bruno Mars collab, being featured in a J.Lo film, and a lot of controversy, from her relationship with Offset and her beef with Minaj to the questions surrounding the release of her long-awaited follow-up to Invasion of Privacy.

In 1989, LL Cool J was booed while attending a rally for Yusef Hawkins, a Black 16-year-old from Brooklyn who had been viciously killed by a group of white youths. “I was there to be supportive and they booed me because somehow I wasn’t connected to the community,” LL would say 31 years later. But the somehow was clear to anyone paying attention at the time: From the beginning, he had always straddled the line between streetwise MC and lover boy, but his third record, the critical misstep Walking With a Panther, veered too far in the latter direction. In the summer of 1989—as Do the Right Thing hit and Public Enemy and N.W.A were becoming the most important groups on earth—songs like “I’m That Type of Guy” rang hollow. Rap’s first big solo superstar had become rap’s first big sellout in the eyes of many.

This explains how a 22-year-old can release a comeback record—one that explicitly commands you not to call it one. 1990’s “Mama Said Knock You Out” is a song of unmitigated aggression where LL’s forceful delivery hits like a flurry of right crosses and uppercuts. You hear him shedding the frustration, punching like a champion coming to reclaim his throne. It became the apex of his music career—a career that may not have continued without it—and it led to countless TV appearances and a legendary MTV Unplugged performance. In a career full of firsts, James Todd Smith notched another one: the first rapper to come back from the dead. 

What happened next: LL continued to split the difference between hard and soft—songs like “Hey Lover” were still sitting next to “I Shot Ya” on track lists a few years later—but by that point, his legacy was solidified. There’s a reason why he essentially invented the term “GOAT.” And while he may not be yours, you’d be hard-pressed to argue against allowing him to use it.

Perhaps, like me, you prefer the earlier Larry Smith productions to the Rick Rubin era of Run-DMC. But there is arguably no list like this without the existence of Raising Hell, the album that dragged rap by its Adidas shoestrings into the mainstream. Led by the future reverend, Run-DMC delivered an album’s worth of hip-hop standards, from the B-boy fairytale of “Peter Piper” to the most famous song ever written about sneakers to the breakneck frat-boy rock of “It’s Tricky.” But the most enduring song off the record may be “Walk This Way,” their collaboration with Aerosmith. It’s the one that made white people take notice of this new sound. It’s also likely the one that propelled the album to platinum and then multiple platinum status—both firsts for the genre. They’d put out better music in other years—I’m partial to not only the early stuff but also “Beats to the Rhyme” and “Run’s House”—but this is the year they broke through. And with them, rap.

What happened next: Run-DMC became rap’s first old-timers at a young age—their comeback record, Down With the King, was somehow released when its two MCs were just 28—and Rev. Run would go on to become rap’s first great reality star. But it was his DJ who may have had the best second act, becoming the first person to see true potential in someone a lot higher up this.

Can someone own a year if they were around for only three-quarters of it? Unquestionably so as it pertains to Gucci Mane’s great 2009 breakthrough. Guwop was released from prison in March of that year. In November, he returned. But in between, he churned out one of the great cult bodies of work that rap had ever seen—up there with Roc-A-Fella years Cam’ron or pre-2008 Lil Wayne. It was the kind of output that converted millions, confused outsiders, and left a footprint so big that you could fit a decade’s worth of Atlanta rap inside it. 

In some ways, this run started in 2008, when he released a half dozen mixtapes and transformed himself from Atlanta curio into the most original trap stylist the city had produced to that point. But his 2009 saw two landmark releases—The Burrprint (The Movie 3D), where he perfected his brand of mush-mouthed and melodic street talk, and his major-label debut, The State Vs. Radric Davis. The latter was the culmination of one of rap’s most inspired runs—one that valued dropping bangers at a furious clip over discretion, and especially over wearing a shirt. (And it was, as with most things Gucci Mane around this time, divisive: Pitchfork gave The State Vs. an 8.0; meanwhile, NME gave it a 2/10.) No matter: The record went gold at a time when the music industry overall was slumping, and it produced his first great mainstream moment in the yellow-drenched “Lemonade.” 

The next few years, however, found Gucci in limbo: stints in rehab, erratic tweets, convoluted beefs with one-time protégés, increasingly mediocre releases, and eventually a return to prison in 2014 after a conviction on gun charges. But when he came home this time, he came home for good. Upon his release in the summer of 2016, he was immediately feted as one of trap music’s true innovators, the father to all of these children who had taken his influence and morphed it into something more commercially viable. Collaborations with Migos, Drake, and Bruno Mars over the next few years would bring the biggest songs of his career. And with his newfound abs and collaborations with the fashion house he shares a name with, he’s clearly in a healthier, happier state. But all of this felt more like a long-awaited coronation than a breakthrough. There are hundreds of rappers who have had hits as big as “I Get the Bag.” But few, if any, had ever been a cult hero like Gucci was in 2009. 

What happened next: “Damn, baby. Feel like you're playing piano on my dick, like you're playing Mozart.” [Editor’s note: The copy desk is pleading with me to note that you shouldn’t click that link if you’re at work or hate Harmony Korine’s oeuvre.]

To some degree or another, every blurb on this list could be replaced with “you had to be there.” But any accounting of Chief Keef’s emergence, in 2012, as an irrepressible force who could quickly, clearly, and effortlessly communicate drill music to a mass audience will feel incomplete. To talk about how seamless that aesthetic transmission was obscures how divisive and abrasive a figure he was made to seem; to talk about him strictly as a pop-sociological phenomenon, with all the race and class baggage that entails, ignores the ways his music actually was confrontational, to often exhilarating ends. In any event, in the span of a year, Keef established, expanded, and inverted a style and laid the groundwork to become one of rap’s most beloved and enduring eccentrics. 

What happened next: To his benefit and detriment, Keef became the poster boy for drill, his influence unquestioned but his attempts to play shows in his hometown complicated by constant protests from police. Still only 29 years old, his life in Los Angeles has in fact seen him become a far stranger and more idiosyncratic artist than that reductive idea of him would suggest—but the breakthroughs now are slow and accretive, not supernovas.

Allowing groups into this exercise likely wouldn’t have added many entries, but it may have shaken up the top five. With all due respect to 2002 Dipset or, say, 1986 Run-DMC, no collective ever had a year quite like Wu-Tang Clan in 1997, when their second LP became one of the most awaited albums of all time. You can thank the RZA’s genius release plan—which allowed each Wu member to ink deals with separate labels while the group was signed to Loud—for that avalanche of anticipation. In the run-up to that sophomore record, classic solo albums like Only Built 4 Cuban Linx …, Liquid Swords, and Ironman were released within a 15-month period, feeding into the idea that Wu-Tang was not only forever—but also omnipresent. (If you were in school around this time, then you can surely recall seeing a crudely drawn Wu W on more than a few desks.)

It’s hard to single out just one benefactor for the purposes of the list—RZA in 1995 would be in the discussion if we were accounting for production—but the most obvious candidate is Method Man. In the early months of 1994—after the release of 36 Chambers—as the group was leveling up from the slums of Shaolin to stages worldwide and people were acquainting themselves with the nine individual members, Meth became the early star. He was the ruggedly handsome guy with one of the best voices you’d ever heard, rapping the hook to an all-time hip-hop single and having a different calling-card song bear his name in steady Rap City rotation. (It also helped that “Method Man,” the song, had the most enduring skit in rap history on the album version—one that forever changed the way I thought of dressers and sewing instruments.) By the end of 1994, Meth had a feature on Biggie’s Ready to Die, another classic single in “Bring the Pain,” and an eventual platinum album in Tical. It didn’t matter that the album wasn’t as great as the other Wu solo records that would immediately follow it. He had cemented himself as a star—the first name you thought of when you thought of the most important rap group ever, at a time when they were conquering the globe.

What happened next: The release of the “I’ll Be There for You/You're All I Need to Get By” remixes with Mary J. Blige the next year turned Meth into a legitimate heartthrob (and a Grammy winner); “How High,” his collaboration with Redman the same year, turned him into one-half of the new Cheech and Chong. Eventually, other Wu members would arguably surpass his stature on wax—Ghostface’s 1997 and 2000 both narrowly missed this list—but only Meth would land a role on The Wirein addition to thirst-worthy photo shoots in Essence.

When KRS-One emerged—from the shelter where he lived as an adolescent and where he would meet his friend and producer, Scott La Rock, who worked there as a counselor—he did so as a member of the first generation to have grown up on hip-hop. His investment in the genre’s history was such that, when he sparked a beef with MC Shan over what was likely a misunderstanding about a lyric from “The Bridge” that referenced hip-hop’s beginnings, KRS’s ire at least scanned as genuine. That beef culminated in “The Bridge Is Over,” which is not only one of rap’s great diss records but also a definitive artifact of its time—delivered in his dynamic, hyper-literate style, which seems to bridge rap’s live roots and its still-codifying conventions as a recorded art. On that song, and throughout Criminal Minded, KRS is brimming with energy and signaling a shift into a new phase for hip-hop, one where the synthesis doesn’t just move from past to present through sampling, but moves in all directions at once. And, at least briefly, placed KRS right in its center.  

What happened next: As quickly as KRS had established himself as the radical new voice, he began acting as hip-hop’s old guard, a keeper of its lore and principles. After La Rock’s death, the subsequent Boogie Down Productions albums (and the later LPs credited to KRS alone) are all dotted with inspired, inventive songs but also cuts that are didactic, scolding, or otherwise retrograde on arrival. Being unstuck in time lasts only so long.

Despite some strong competition, no one dominated the summer of 2015 quite like Fetty Wap, a one-eyed rapper who emerged from New Jersey—but really from the SoundCloud morass—to rattle off three consecutive top-10 hits and become the kind of inescapable presence on radio that recalled the ready-made major label stars of the late 1990s and early 2000s. He also produced one of the most heartwarming Instagram videos of all time, presenting his close friend and collaborator Monty with a new car. 

What happened next: Unfortunately, barely any of the music Fetty released after his debut registered in any meaningful way. What’s far worse: In 2022 he pleaded guilty to federal drug charges, and is currently serving a six-year sentence at a low-security facility in Ohio.

Country Grammar, Nelly’s diamond-selling debut album from 2000, was essentially a fluke, a phenomenon that caught its own label by surprise. Two years later, it was clear that this was all happening by design. Throughout 2001, Country Grammar continued its march toward a diamond certification, the St. Lunatics album became a modest hit (and Jagged Edge’s Nelly-featuring “Where the Party At” a major one), and his contribution to the Training Day soundtrack even ignited an improbable beef with KRS-One, from which Nelly would emerge the winner, or at least the more dignified combatant. In these circumstances, a new superstar’s second album is often rushed, sloppy, a forgettable xerox of the first. But Nellyville did exactly what it was meant to do: prove that Nelly could top charts while adopting virtually any style. There was the Neptunes-produced Mystikal lite of “Hot in Herre” and the fairy-tale R&B of “Dilemma,” “Air Force Ones” sounded like if “My Adidas” owned a pistol, and “Pimp Juice” predicted Anderson .Paak’s whole career. At the year’s very end, Jay put it best: “Only dudes moving units? Em, Pimp Juice, and us.” 

What happened next: After 2002, Nelly became what he was probably always destined to be: a more or less reliable producer of crossover hits who seemed to exist parallel to the rest of rap, seldom driving its aesthetic development but also not beholden to it. In 2004, he dropped separate LPs, Sweat and Suit, on the same day; both sold well, but neither seemed in conversation with where the genre was at the moment. Since 2005’s “Grillz,” he’s become one of those instant-legacy acts: still charting, but with songs that will never make the Hall of Fame plaque.

After the success that she had in 1996, the only thing fans wanted to hear was when Lauryn Hill would be dropping a solo album. Her group, the Fugees, went seven times platinum with their Grammy Award–winning sophomore album The Score, propelled to the stratosphere by Lauryn’s Grammy Award–winning take on Roberta Flack’s cover of “Killing Me Softly with His Song,” which bridged the gap between classic soul and more modern hip-hop vibes years before neo-soul became marketing jargon. The New Jersey trio was unstoppable, but the album mostly felt like a real showcase for how gifted Lauryn was as both a rapper and singer. It set the stage for a solo album that would allow her to dive into both bags. After attending Columbia University, breaking up with the Fugees, and meeting Rohan Marley (and having her first child), Hill began work on that solo project, which became her debut album, 1998’s The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill. 

The reaction was immediate—this was a masterpiece from one of the most gifted talents walking the Earth. Lauryn had a way of tapping into raw emotions so effortlessly, whether she was kicking razor-sharp rhymes or flexing her singing chops. The 10 (!) Grammy nominations she received, the most for a woman in a single year (a feat topped by Beyoncé’s 11 nominations for the upcoming 67th Annual Grammy Awards), proved that Lauryn’s particular approach to blending genres was felt by the masses; "Doo Wop (That Thing)" paid homage to two sounds that she’s pulled from in seamless fashion, while cuts like “Ex-Factor” and her D’Angelo collab “Nothing Even Matters” became forever R&B selections. (What’s even more impressive is that her album isn’t all she did in 1998; somehow, Lauryn found the time to write and produce Aretha Franklin’s last top 40 hit, “A Rose Is Still a Rose,” that year.) Lauryn Hill’s 1998 felt like a blessing; all of the stars aligning to allow the perfect album from a treasured voice to become what fans wanted, garnering the success many artists still hope for today. 

What happened next: Lauryn’s been sued by the people who co wrote and coproduced her debut album. She released an MTV Unplugged album back when those were still a thing, and has spent the last two decades being more known for shows she notoriously shows up late to.

Ms. Lauryn Hill: ‘The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill’ | Vol. 1 Ep. 13

No Skips with Jinx and Shea

No Skips with Jinx and Shea

No Skips

• Aug. 5, 2021 • 1 hr 40 min

Ms. Lauryn Hill: ‘The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill’ | Vol. 1 Ep. 13

No Skips with Jinx and Shea

No Skips with Jinx and Shea

No Skips

• Aug. 5, 2021 • 1 hr 40 min

Music

Ms. Lauryn Hill: ‘The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill’ | Vol. 1 Ep. 13

No Skips with Jinx and Shea

No Skips with Jinx and Shea

No Skips

• Aug. 5, 2021 • 1 hr 40 min

It’s funny, given Public Enemy dropped masterpiece LPs in 1988 and 1990, that their biggest song starts with a dramatic, drawn-out “Nineteen eiiiiighttttyyyyyy-nine!” After that song, “Fight the Power,” which was written for and played throughout Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing, became an anthem in ’89, PE returned a year later with Fear of a Black Planet, one of the most singular rap albums ever recorded. Where ’88’s It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back was lean, kinetic, and purposeful, Planet sounded as if the last century was happening all at once; the Bomb Squad’s latticework sampling style yielded the type of controlled chaos that, though compelling on its own, would render nearly any MC an afterthought. Not Chuck D. His voice alone—booming and authoritative but never to the point of self-parody—conferred gravity, urgency, stakes on every bar. And with the release of Planet less than a year after Do the Right Thing, he became that rarest of artists: someone who you were told was important who actually was. 

What happened next: The following year’s Apocalypse 91 ... The Enemy Strikes Black has been shamefully buried in the historical record—it’s no Black Planet or Nation, but a wonderful record nonetheless—and the collagist, cacophonous sampling style that made Black Planet sound like nothing else on earth was essentially made illegal. This was when rap was exploding, both commercially and creatively, and within a half decade, it was a dramatically different planet than the one Chuck had helped terraform.

There’s an argument that if you could move a few events just a few months into 2015, we’d be talking about this as a top-10 year. Tha Tour: Pt. 1—on the short list for best rap records of the 2010s, even if it never got an official release—came out in September 2014. Yeezy Season 3 took place at Madison Square Garden in February 2016, and despite the typical Ye theatrics, the high point of the evening came when Kanye passed Thugger the aux and he played “With Them” for the first time. (The image of the Yeezy models who were paid to stand completely still trying not to bob their heads sums it up. It was the moment when even the non-converts realized he was the best rapper on the planet—and also that Vic Mensa was decidedly not.) Adding either one of those events to the résumé changes the discussion and likely catapults Young Thug high up this list. But even without them, what we’re left with is one of the most stylistically inventive, undeniable stretches of the 21st century. It’s an embarrassment of riches, but it also feels like we got a little shortchanged: There’s an alternate history where we also got the London on da Track version of Slime Season, the Metro Thuggin record, and Hy!£UN35, all of which have presumably been lost to the sands of various ProTools sessions on hard drives spread across the greater Atlanta area.

What happened next: There’s also an argument for Thugger’s 2016, which, in addition to the aforementioned Yeezy Season 3 takeover, also gives us a trio of good-to-great full-lengths, “Pick Up the Phone,” and a number of classic guest appearances. While he’s never reached the same level in the public consciousness as most of the other names on this list, Young Thug has done more to push the craft of rapping in new, exciting directions than virtually anyone who’s ever touched a mic. To think, we almost lost whatever’s next for him thanks to an overzealous prosecutor.

While it wouldn’t be certified platinum until 1995, Paid in Full—Eric B. & Rakim’s debut album from 1987—was a seismic event in hip-hop, so much so that it started a then-unprecedented bidding war. Island offered the duo $450,000 to make the follow-up. (“Hell no,” Ra remembers Eric saying. “Our record is more profitable than Joshua Tree.”) Island, Warner, and MCA all vied for their services; they eventually landed at MCA on a contract that included a million-dollar signing bonus, a recording budget to match, and a multi-million-dollar publishing deal. Ra, terminally unflappable, responded not by triangulating where rap radio was going, but by burrowing deeper into his famously grid-lined notebooks. The verses on Follow the Leader are almost impossibly dense, but Ra makes each of them sound natural and intuitive. There were bigger commercial phenomena, but his status as a technician who sent the genre hurtling into a new era was absolutely unquestioned. “I was the best MC in the game,” he would later write in his autobiography. “I knew it, and I knew most MCs would admit it if they were telling the truth.”

What happened next: There would be two more albums under the Eric B. & Rakim banner, then a slow drip of solo efforts; the most notable Rakim venture in the 21st century is actually the ill-fated working arrangement he had with Dr. Dre’s Aftermath Entertainment. (Some of the beats on 50 Cent’s Get Rich or Die Tryin’ originally belonged to him.) While the technique has never wavered, he’s evoked more often now as a shorthand for precision than as someone vying for any throne.

The Word of God: An Interview With Rakim

By David Ma and 1 more • Aug. 28 • 18 min read

The Word of God: An Interview With Rakim

By David Ma and 1 more • Aug. 28 • 18 min read

Music

The Word of God: An Interview With Rakim

By David Ma and 1 more • Aug. 28 • 18 min read

Drake has certainly had bigger years than 2015—both 2016 and 2018 were more successful by pure numbers—but this is the moment when the critical and commercial consensuses were most aligned around him. It starts with the surprise drop in February of If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late, his best post–Take Care project and the last one where he seemed to care fully about rapping as opposed to, say, becoming a trend-hopping global icon and meme purveyor. Of course memes were a big part of his year later in 2015: not only because of the way he leaned into them for “Hotline Bling,” making it the song that transformed him into a name your mom would recognize, but also because of how he used them to crush Meek Mill, playing them on the giant OVO Fest screen behind him as he rapped “Back to Back.” (Incidentally, the catchiest diss song ever made—at least until, well, you know.) 

Drake’s victory in that battle—as the Canadian former child actor vanquished a street-hardened Philly rapper using a variety of JPEGs and PG-13 insults—felt like a seismic shift for not only him but also the culture; that we can call the year it was revealed he used ghostwriters his best may say as much about him as it does about how music had changed. Squint, however, and you can see Drake’s downfall start to take shape in 2015. His co-opting of Fetty Wap’s “My Way” fed into the growing “Drake steals other rappers’ shine” discourse, while he ended the year with another surprise drop, a collaboration with Future. What a Time to Be Alive would produce a few hits, but relatively speaking, it was the first brick either man had thrown up in a while. Its existence, however, remains a fascinating piece of the puzzle of their relationship, which of course completely fractured in 2024—courtesy of another Future collaborative album. 

What happened next: Billions upon billions of streams, overlong albums with increasingly diminishing returns, and two battles in which he was eviscerated worse than Meek Mill was at his hands. You either die a 6 god or live long enough to see yourself rap, “This Epstein angle was the shit I expected.”

The early ’90s marked the first time the epicenter of rap had shifted away from the city that birthed it. Death Row Records had taken gangsta rap to places it had never been before, and suddenly it seemed as though the future of the genre was only lowrider Impalas and “Funky Worm” synths. Sure, artists like Nas and Wu-Tang played a role in pulling attention back toward New York, but none did as much for the reputation of the five burroughs as the Notorious B.I.G. Ready to Die was released in late 1994, and while “Juicy” was a massive hit that year, it wasn’t until “Big Poppa” and the “One More Chance” remix hit radio and MTV that the Bad Boy takeover was in full effect. Both songs were top 10 hits and sold over a million copies—the former going six times platinum. This is all before accounting for the crew album that spawned two hits in “Get Money” and “Player’s Anthem,” the appearance on Michael Jackson’s HIStory, and the B-side classic “Who Shot Ya?” But for his best song of 1995, he quite literally dragged hip-hop back from the West Coast. About 15 minutes into the flip side of Mister Cee’s The Best of the Notorious B.I.G., the Bed Stuy legend goes jackin’ for L.A. beats, tearing through four Dre productions and one from Above the Law, unfurling a narrative masterpiece and recontextualizing music that had been tethered to the opposite coast. File it in the same category as Life After Death’s “Notorious Thugs”: proof that he could’ve done this in any region, with any style, in any era. 

What happened next: Within two years, both Biggie and his chief rival would be gone—likely because of the feud between them, which possibly started with “Who Shot Ya?” He was 24 when he was assassinated in Los Angeles. It’s an age that makes you wonder whether there should’ve been another, bigger year from him on this list.

How disastrous was the I Am … Nastradamus era, truly? Coming off two classic records—the second of which hit no. 1 on the Billboard chart—Nas plotted a double album that would show off his undeniable talents and his growing appeal. But rampant bootlegging thwarted that plan. Forced to adjust, he released two reworked, rushed LPs in 1999. They were unarguably successful on a commercial level—I Am … hit no. 1 and would go double platinum, while Nastradamus would also earn a plaque—but something had been lost in Nas’s attempt to be all things to all listeners. When Jay-Z called the albums “doo” on “Takeover,” it struck a chord. (Even if that may have been a slight exaggeration—“Nas Is Like” and “Project Windows” would be standouts on most rappers’ best albums.) Toss in the Firm flop and the Steve Stoute “Hate Me Now” debacle, and Q.B.’s Finest had balled until he fell, with no help at all. 

In hindsight, the most ironic Jay callout on “Takeover” was how Nas had lost his “spark,” because he found it in the making of Stillmatic. To hear him roar out of his grave on “Ether”—his all-time diss track, the most enduring moment of the feud—was to bear witness to a resurrection. It was the Promised One—the spiritual successor to Rakim and author of arguably the greatest rap album ever made—making good on the heavyweight expectations placed on his shoulders. He was slaying not just the dragon in a Roc-A-Wear jumpsuit, but also the industry that had left him “fucked over, left for dead, dissed, and forgotten.” It quite literally changed the course of his career and hip-hop in the process. (Not to mention how it pushed the words “ether” and “stan” into the lexicon.) This is why Nas’s best year is one when he didn’t put out an official release until just before Christmas, like a team that trails the entire game until late in the fourth. It’s also the reason why Jay-Z’s 2001 doesn’t make this list. Sometimes, the only thing sweeter than your own victory is denying your opponent one. 

Nas’s 2001 also earned him enough capital for something of a do-over. In 2002, he released The Lost Tapes, which contained at least five songs from the I Am … Nastradamus sessions that had been scrapped because of bootlegging. Today, that collection of castoffs and loosies is considered among his best releases. Maybe the original double album would’ve been talked about in the same way. But perception matters, and nothing changes perception like a good comeback story.

What happened next: Jay-Z became Nas’s boss, and then they made up and collaborated a few times, including on the regrettably named “Black Republicans.” Today, Nas is fresh off a six-album run with Hit-Boy and still promising an album with DJ Premier. Until that time comes, we’ll be heading back to “Nas Is Like” and “Come Get Me.”

Low-key, Jay-Z was rolling into 1998 off of an interesting 1997. He dropped In My Lifetime, Vol. 1, which did go platinum, likely due to the obvious attempts at establishing more pop appeal through features from Babyface and Blackstreet, but 1997 didn’t produce the breakthrough for Hov that 1998 ended up providing him. 

That May, Jay scored a hit with Jermaine Dupri’s “Money Ain’t a Thang,” topped with a lavish video full of racing (both horses and foreign cars) while JD and Hov seemingly spent bags of money on, well, everything. That summer, the certified classic Rush Hour film featured “Can I Get A …,” a party starter featuring another “it” rapper (Ja Rule) and a Roc associate (Amil) that became one of Jay’s biggest singles of that era, getting as high as no. 19 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. Five weeks after the official release of “Can I Get A…,” Jay released Vol. 2... Hard Knock Life, which to this day is his most successful project. Much of the credit may go to the lead single and title track, which was produced by New Jersey legend Mark the 45 King and based on a sample from Annie. It became Jay’s biggest single up to that time, giving him a claim to the New York throne. That album ended up being Jay’s first no. 1 debut on the Billboard 200, and while he eventually won the Grammy for Best Rap Album, he boycotted the ceremony due to DMX not receiving any Grammy nominations after the year X had in 1998, which echoed a similar boycott of the Grammys in 1989 by the likes of Public Enemy, Salt-N-Pepa, and DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince, when the Grammys refused to televise the rap category. Part of Hov’s leanings into the mainstream may have been to help hip-hop as a whole be taken as seriously as any other genre being recognized during awards season.

What happened next: He built his case as the best rapper who’s ever lived, and whether you believe that or not, his spectre still haunts every reasonable GOAT discussion. That talk began in earnest a few years later, when he released arguably his most acclaimed album, The Blueprint, in 2001. Since then he’s “retired” and came back within three years, and more recently dropped an album and then disappeared for another seven. Today, he’s more of a mogul than a rapper. (Can someone explain to him what a capitalist is?) Though it’s impossible to have this discussion in 2024 and not note that he was recently added to a sexual assault lawsuit against Sean “Diddy” Combs. Jay has vehemently denied the plaintiff’s accounts, and the situation continues to evolve.

In an era defined by rap excess—the shiny suits and hundred-thousand-dollar watches—nothing was as audacious as Percy Miller atop the gold and platinum No Limit tank. The label’s general—but somehow only the colonel of the vehicle—had spent years building his discography and his roster. The video for his breakout single (which dropped in January 1998) was his means of introducing himself to a world outside the Deep South and Rap City. That “Make ’Em Say Ugh” was essentially a showcase for the label was fitting—Miller was flexing not only the talent he had amassed but also, in a sense, the revolutionary deal he’d struck with Priority Records, where he maintained ownership over the label’s masters. No Limit would release 23 records total in 1998, including an album from Snoop Dogg—his Death Row defection release. (It’s a pace that likely put the Pen & Pixel team’s kids through private school.) Miller was not just a player-coach, but also agent and GM—and maybe the best that rap had ever seen to that point. It made sense, then, that the next year he would try his hand at being a sports agent, negotiating Ricky Williams’s infamous contract with the Saints. It was incentives laden—typically the type of deal Miller had thrived on. When it backfired on Williams, it wasn’t totally shocking, but perhaps it should’ve been. Everything Master P had touched—or rode in on—to that point had turned to gold.

What happened next: While the label would file for bankruptcy in 2003, Miller has remained a fringe pop culture figure for the past two decades, appearing in everything ranging from Dancing With the Stars to his son’s Nickelodeon vehicle, Romeo! And while he never fulfilled his dream of making it to the league, he did make training camp or summer league rosters for the Hornets, Nuggets, and Kings. Unfortunately, they didn’t let him wheel the tank out on the court for those games. Maybe he would’ve had a higher shooting percentage if they did.

After bending rap into his orbit almost immediately upon the release of his 2012 debut, Pluto, Future faltered with his sophomore album, 2014’s Honest—at least, that’s the sense he kept getting from fans and critics, so much so that it inspired him to retreat and reshape himself into something meaner, hungrier, and much darker. That recalibration was unveiled on Monster, which he dropped in the fall of ’14. But at first, few were paying attention. (Its eventual hit single, “Fuck Up Some Commas,” wouldn’t become a phenomenon until the following year.) It took the slow build of Beast Mode and 56 Nights—the latter titled for the stint in a United Arab Emirates jail that DJ Esco was forced to serve while in possession of Future’s unreleased music—to convince listeners that he was once again at the genre’s cutting edge. It happened slowly, then all at once: By the time DS2 was released in July, Future’s return to the top of the food chain was being treated as a fait accompli. At a time when the mixtape ecosystem of the 2000s had been more or less fully replaced by monetizable, easily searchable releases uploaded to DSPs, Future embraced the chaos and unpredictability of that earlier era to take control of his career and the way it would be framed to the public. What’s more: This calendar year yielded some of the best music he ever made, from the soul-wrenching Zaytoven collaborations on Beast Mode to 56 Nights’ rolling dread and the serrated DS2. It was a radical act of reinvention executed in full view of the world. 

What happened next: Future has never again slipped out of favor the way he did in 2014 and has in fact had more years with multiple high-profile releases. But this year retains a special place in rap fans’ memories, to the point where impressive spurts from other MCs are compared to Future’s 2015.

DMX entered 1998 like a dog that had been eager to break free from the chain holding it back from unleashing its full potential onto the world. After facing hardships early in life, DMX found his calling through rap, and after a few false starts to his recording career, X signed with Def Jam in 1997; his breakthrough, the hypnotic Dame Grease production “Get at Me Dog,” was the opening salvo. A month later, DMX implored the game to “Stop Being Greedy” and give him a seat at the table before he takes the kitchen for himself. He was featured on The Lox’s “Money, Power & Respect,” his trademark “arf, arf!” punctuating the song and doubling as a rallying cry, while the double-platinum “Ruff Ryders Anthem” rode in on Casio synths and a flock of ATVs, asserting his claim that maybe the best New York rapper wasn’t from one of the five boroughs. The anticipation for DMX’s debut album was at a fever pitch, hitting stores two weeks after “Ruff Ryders Anthem” dropped in stores. It’s Dark and Hell is Hot debuted at no. 1 on the Billboard 200, eventually going quadruple-platinum and confirming to the world what the hood already knew: DMX was that guy. That November, not only did DMX kick off his action-packed acting career with Hype Williams’s Belly, but he also tugged at our heartstrings with the second single from his second studio album, “Slippin’.” That album—Flesh of My Flesh, Blood of My Blood—also got a release in 1998. It debuted at no. 1 on the Billboard 200 as well, making DMX one the few artists in modern history to do that twice in the same year with different albums.

What happened next: DMX continued to top the charts in 1999, netting his third no. 1 with his third album ...And Then There Was X, which featured the Grammy-nominated "Party Up (Up in Here)" and went five times platinum. By 2000, DMX was stepping out into more film roles, acting alongside Jet Li and Aaliyah in Romeo Must Die; X would continue to act, and make music, while dealing with bouts of drug abuse and legal issues. He died in April 2021; his would-be comeback album, Exodus, came out just a few weeks later.

Some of the best diss tracks—“Ether,” “Hit ’Em Up,” take your pick—choose beats that are deadly serious and make the stakes of the battle seem positively life-or-death. But it can be just as effective to make your insults sound as if they’re coming in the midst of a victory lap. That’s what “No Vaseline,” which is itself tacked on to the end of Ice Cube’s brash, brilliant Death Certificate, does to the N.W.A members he left behind. The financial fuckery, the beholdenness to a crooked manager, a move to the Inland Empire—all of this is treated as a joke, which it would be if you managed to escape. When you combine a masterpiece LP and its death-blow diss with the fact that N.W.A’s album without him was seen as a giant step backward (and with Cube’s acting debut, in John Singleton’s Boyz n the Hood), it seemed that he had transcended not only a stifling group dynamic but also old ideas of what a star rapper’s career could be.  

What happened next: Ice Cube would continue to get bigger, at least on paper: The Predator, released at the end of 1992, is his lone no. 1 album, and his signature song, “It Was a Good Day,” exploded the year after; the acting was, of course, not a one-off experiment. But the passage of time came for him like it does for all of us, with his public image from Straight Outta Compton through “Good Day” becoming the frequent referent, and sometimes text, of his music and on-screen persona.

Kendrick Lamar’s 2024 would probably have been different if Drake’s J. Cole–featuring “First Person Shooter” never existed, right? Reportedly, Drake reached out to both Cole and Kendrick about being on 2023’s “First Person Shooter.” But due to the beef that had been brewing between him and Drake since Kendrick said what he said on “Control” in 2013, Kendrick declined. This past March, Kendrick decided to address the situation, using his verse from “Like That”—a song from the first collaborative album Future and Metro Boomin’ released in 2024, WE DON’T TRUST YOU—to draw a line in the sand, spitting “Fuck sneak dissin’, first-person shooter, I hope they came with three switches.” Drake responded with a pair of tracks aimed at Kendrick (and everyone else who started to speak on him) in the middle of April, and while Kendrick was put on the clock by anyone repping OVO, he took that opportunity to channel his feelings about Drake as a man and an artist into a four-track EP’s worth of vitriol. The first diss track, “Euphoria,” debuted at no. 1 on Spotify and peaked at no. 3 on the Billboard Hot 100. But “Not Like Us” was the final blow in this battle. Taking a page from his OG Dr. Dre, Kendrick took his beef with Drake to the club. Kendrick, and a massive beat from DJ Mustard, created an undeniable banger that’s too infectious to miss. Serena Williams crip walked to it during the 2024 ESPYs, the Dodgers celebrated to it in their locker room after making it to the World Series, and some of the finest HBCU bands have turned it into a fight anthem. Kendrick found a way to beat Drake at his own game, which turned into some of the biggest successes of his career.

Roughly two weeks before the video for “Not Like Us” dropped, Kendrick held a concert, The Pop Out, that was streamed live on Prime Video. The celebratory performance featured a number of West Coast luminaries, including LeBron James and Tyler, the Creator, joining Kendrick and Co., and Kendrick ran “Not Like Us” back five times. (The lowest blow: Raptors legend DeMar DeRozan showed up to dance on the 6 God’s grave. It was even worse than the Clippers stealing Kawhi.) In September, the show was followed by a huge announcement: Kendrick will be the first solo hip-hop artist to headline a Super Bowl halftime show in February. And Kendrick had clearly still been in the lab, judging by the snippet of material he premiered at the beginning of the “Not Like Us” video. That song was eventually revealed to be “squabble up,” taken from his sixth studio album, GNX, which got a surprise release on November 22. GNX immediately raked in more than 44 million global streams on Spotify on its release day, with “squabble up” hitting no. 1 on the Spotify charts as well. GNX debuted at no. 1 on the Billboard 200 (Kendrick’s fifth consecutive album to do so) and put Kendrick in rarefied air, with five songs from GNX dominating the top five spots on that chart. Before the release of GNX, there were three artists who’d done this: the Beatles, Taylor Swift, and Drake. Not only did Kendrick beat Drake in their battle, but he beat Drake at his own game. No wonder Drake is seeking legal action.

What happens next: Lamar’s 2025 will be on the road; after his Super Bowl LIX performance, he will be joined by SZA for his Grand National Tour, hitting 19 stadiums (including two dates in Toronto). And judging by the amount of material Kendrick dropped in 2024, don’t be surprised if those “Kendrick has an entire album waiting to drop” theories are actually on to something.

You are unlikely to find any Lil Wayne fan who will tell you he put out his best music in 2008. The mixtape run from the handful of years prior has far more daring, accomplished work than most of what can be found on Tha Carter III; even if you limit the discussion to his studio albums, the first two installments of that series are superior. But ’08 is undoubtedly the apex of his career, the moment when it seemed contrarian to even entertain another contender for the best rapper alive crown. Part of this is because of the way that mixtape run functioned: These were the days of file-sharing platforms, of burned CDs in car changers and iPods with sloppily tagged freestyles; you could—and would—hear loosies and remixes that were new to you months after they’d first bubbled up online. The sprawling, mutating release strategy seemed to mirror his approach to the records themselves, where he would lapse into patois for a few bars before interpolating Jay—and then threatening to render him obsolete. But Tha Carter III served as a clean capstone, and as irrefutable proof of what those who were paying attention had long sensed: that the man had long ago left us earthlings behind. 

What happened next: Wayne has never returned to these creative or commercial heights—who could? The incarceration, on a gun charge, that lasted most of 2010 pretty clearly demarcates his prime from what came after. But while the studio albums are sloppy (and while he’s always in and out of legal battles with Baby, who seems sent from the beyond to teach students about the practical difficulties of working in contract law), Wayne has quietly put together a superb résumé of guest spots in the 2010s and ’20s.

For many, 2000 would be the Eminem year. His third album, The Marshall Mathers LP, went seven times platinum with 1.78 million copies sold in its first week, as the lead single, “The Real Slim Shady,” sold 7 million copies itself; singles like “Stan” captivated listeners to the point that the song’s title is now used to describe a specific type of fan, and most people use the term without even thinking about Em. However, Eminem somehow found a way to top his greatest success with The Eminem Show in 2002 while crafting the perfect theatrical vehicle and helping sign one of the most game-changing artists to hit the industry. 

By the time The Eminem Show hit shelves, two years after The Marshall Mathers LP, Eminem had the game-winning formula down to a science. You start with a huge single right before the album’s release that announces that you’ve returned while poking at the more buzzworthy names of the time. (The one for this album, “Without Me,” went seven times platinum off of lines mocking Dick Cheney, Moby, NSYNC’s Chris Kirkpatrick, and Limp Bizkit, among others.) A few months later, you go ahead and release a more introspective single like “The Way I Am”—or, for The Eminem Show, “Cleanin’ Out My Closet,” which found Em digging into the depths of his pain to unleash all of the hatred he had toward his mother, Debbie. Em even found time to address beef on tracks like “Say What You Say” featuring Dr. Dre, where they made sure to let Jermaine Dupri and Canibus know that they heard what had been said and weren’t afraid to address it. (It should be noted, however, that wasn’t even his most significant beef of 2002: He’d also annihilate whatever credibility The Source had left and whatever hope Benzino had at a rap career with a pair of disses—two more than either probably deserved.)

The Eminem Show went on to go 12 times platinum in the United States, selling 25 million copies worldwide and becoming the bestselling single-disc rap album ever. But it’s somehow not the defining moment of his 2002. Later that year, he’d star in the loosely biographical film 8 Mile, essentially Rocky for anyone who recognizes the “Shook Ones, Part II” beat. It took $243 million at the box office on a reported $41 million budget, and its lead single went 13 times platinum on its own. “Lose Yourself” was so big that it caused a pause in the release of the singles from The Eminem Show. Today, it’s the soundtrack of truck commercials and white guys looking to pick a fight at last call. But two decades ago, it was a seismic shift—proof that the bottle-blond, skinny Cartman had mass appeal beyond sticking his middle figure in every camera he came across. 

Eminem wasn’t done, though; his biggest coup of 2002 may have come alongside Dr. Dre, when they signed someone who will appear a little higher on this list to Shady/Aftermath for the laughable-in-hindsight price of $1 million.

What happened next: Eminem released three more singles from The Eminem Show in 2003 before focusing more on his work as a producer and label head, his sobriety, and his role in the game after sitting atop the throne for so long.

When Dr. Dre split from N.W.A to help build Death Row, he happened upon a talent by the name of Snoop Doggy Dogg, who rolled with two other performers (Nate Dogg and Warren G) as a crew called 213. As Dre worked on his own solo projects, Snoop was right alongside him, from the “Deep Cover” single that gave us a glimpse into Dre and Snoop’s chemistry to two huge records from Dre’s groundbreaking late-1992 debut album, The Chronic, that owned 1993. First up was the January release of the G-funk dream of “Nuthin' but a 'G' Thang,” which took listeners on a chronic-soaked trek through C-O-M-P-T-O-N with a trunk full of bass and a belly full of malt liquor. That May, Dre and Snoop were at it again, taking on Luther Campbell, Tim Dog, Jerry Heller, and Eazy-E on the scathing hit diss record “Fuck Wit Dre Day (And Everybody's Celebratin').” Keep in mind, all of this was at a pivotal moment for West Coast hip-hop and during a time when MTV was the source for music news, including everything happening over on Death Row. For anyone who wasn’t hype for Snoop’s debut album Doggystyle to hit shelves, “Who Am I (What’s My Name)?” had everyone throwing up their hands over Dre’s “Atomic Dog” interpolation. All of this led to the inevitable: Doggystyle debuted at no. 1 on the Billboard Hot 200, selling more than a million copies in the first two weeks of its release. Not only was this how the West won the rap game, but this was how it was done: talent was found, nurtured, and grown over time. Set up the foundation and all you have to do is watch that seed blossom.

What happened next: Snoop’s plant has continued to grow over the three decades since Doggystyle’s release. “Gin & Juice” was released as a single in 1994, and Snoop spent the next 30 years becoming one of hip-hop’s biggest icons.

Tragedy, then farce, right? In 2005, during a televised benefit for the victims of Hurricane Katrina, Kanye West stood beside a stunned Mike Myers and said seven unscripted, unsparing words: “George Bush doesn’t care about Black people.” Conservatives acted aggrieved, and polite liberals were aghast; no one could mount a serious argument that he was wrong. Kanye’s second album, Late Registration, had just come out, and there were surely people in some boardroom fretting that the incident would hamper his ability to be the crossover superstar he aspired to be. But his next LP, 2007’s Graduation, was stratospheric. Its follow-up, the following year’s electro-pop downer 808s & Heartbreak, was divisive but given plenty of serious attention. Even his oddest instincts were indulged, for a time. Almost exactly four years after the Katrina broadcast, though, Kanye again went off script at a live event, this time rushing the VMA stage to preempt a Taylor Swift acceptance speech and insist that Beyoncé should have won the award for Best Female Video instead. You don’t need a semiotics PhD to trace the ugly underpinnings of the public’s turn on Kanye. 

So he disappeared—first to Italy, where he planned to apprentice in fashion, vowing to leave music behind for good. But near the end of 2009, he flew to Honolulu, where, over the next several months, he would enlist luminaries from his youth (RZA, Q-Tip), longtime collaborators (Mike Dean, Kid Cudi), and emerging stars (Nicki Minaj) to do something ill-advised: make an apology album. But while My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy is in some ways the return to formalist, maximalist hip-hop that a skittish executive would advise Kanye to deliver, it’s also pretty baroque and fucked up. From the time he appeared at the 2010 VMAs to debut “Runaway” with Pusha T—mumbling about emailed dick pics over a ghoulish piano line and Pete Rock drums—it was clear that he was chasing something other than goodwill and SoundScan numbers. 

Over the course of 2010, while he leaked and updated eventual album tracks in real time on the internet, Kanye also launched a weekly series of free songs called G.O.O.D. Fridays. For three months leading up to Dark Fantasy’s release (then once again at Christmas), these were event listening, with surprising guest turns and very little mixing. A largely a capella J. Cole verse accelerated his ascendancy; Lloyd Banks briefly became a critical cause célèbre. Records that debuted as informal live performances were spoken about in hushed tones: “Chain Heavy” and “Mama’s Boyfriend” were practically canonized before studio versions had ever been released. A year after he had seemed to torch his public profile, he once again became the inarguable center of rap, and perhaps pop culture. 

What happened next: Kanye dropped another masterpiece, Yeezus, in 2013, then receded from the public eye to live a quiet life in St. Paul.

The case for 50 Cent’s 2003 as the best year any rapper has ever had begins with a canceled show. In late January of that year, Curtis Jackson arrived in San Francisco to perform at Kelly’s Mission Rock. It was a 1,000-person venue. As many as 4,000 fans showed up. One was arrested for inciting a riot. Everyone was forced to go home, including 50, who couldn’t get through the crowd to get inside the venue.

He didn’t even have an album out yet. 

Rap hype has a way of seeming quaint in retrospect. Wu-Tang Forever was one of the most anticipated records ever, but it feels like the product of a bygone era when thousands of people would line up for a chance to buy an album with U-God verses at midnight. Snoop’s 1993 sometimes seems like a weird footnote from a time when he was the face of gangsta rap, before he was Martha Stewart’s buddy and a weed-scented Corona pitchman. But the hype around 50 Cent and Get Rich or Die Tryin’ still feels palpable. Never has an industry takeover felt so swift and complete—never had someone gone from afterthought to superstar so quickly, and yes, that includes every other name on this list. GRODT was omnipresent—the album cuts getting so many spins that they felt bigger than other rappers’ singles. If you lived through it, you can likely close your eyes right now and hear “If I Can’t” blaring out of every third car that passes you.

The marketing narrative behind 50 in 2003 also doubles as one of the reasons the year tops our list. If you knew just one thing about 50 back then, it was that he’d been shot nine times. While many rappers on this list had been left for dead figuratively at one time or another, 50 was found bleeding out in front of his grandmother’s house in 2000, reportedly targeted because of things he had previously disclosed on a record. He survived and immediately went to work on making himself bulletproof—becoming either a superhero or an antihero, depending on your vantage point. In the midst of 50’s classic 2002 mixtape run, Eminem came in contact with his music, and Marshall Mathers and the man who molded him into a superstar went to work on doing the same for the kid from Queens. They took the skills that 50 had learned from working with Jam Master Jay and the Trackmasters, the beats that Rakim had abandoned when he left Aftermath, the mush-mouthed drawl left by the bullet that went into 50’s mouth, and the all-world spite that fueled him and used it all to craft the most hyped rap debut of all time.

His accomplishments from that era are too numerous to list—the sales and airplay records, the countless awards and accolades, the unforgettable BET Awards performance, the loosely biographical movie, the Vitamin Water deal—but my favorite way to explain 50’s dominance in the aftermath of GRODT has nothing to do with that album specifically. It’s the platinum certification for another record, his G-Unit partner Lloyd Banks’s The Hunger for More. There’s no world in which a punch line rapper with a record light on hooks should’ve sold that much, especially in an era of decline for the recording industry. But such was the benefit of being in 50’s orbit at that time. He had so much hype that just by standing next to him, you were guaranteed to catch whatever fell off him.

What happened next: Graduation didn’t kill gangsta rap, but Curtis killed 50’s run as a hitmaker. But even as he lost power, he gained Power. His debut album presented an either-or proposition. He chose one path and never looked back.

The Man and the Machine: On 20 Years of 50 Cent and ‘Get Rich or Die Tryin’’

By Paul Thompson • Feb. 6, 2023 • 14 min read

The Man and the Machine: On 20 Years of 50 Cent and ‘Get Rich or Die Tryin’’

By Paul Thompson • Feb. 6, 2023 • 14 min read

Music

The Man and the Machine: On 20 Years of 50 Cent and ‘Get Rich or Die Tryin’’

By Paul Thompson • Feb. 6, 2023 • 14 min read