How the Greatest Hip-Hop Artists bracket works
Rank rappers without dragging anything into rows. You get one matchup at a time — 2Pac or The Notorious B.I.G.? Jay-Z or Nas? — and after 31 picks the bracket has a champion, with everything else placed by how far it got. Comparing two tracks is far easier than sorting 32 of them at once, which is why the finished list tends to survive a second look.
This bracket runs 5 rounds at the default 32-slot size (Round of 32, Sweet 16, Elite 8, Final Four, Championship), with every one of the 32 tracks in the field. Seeding is random, which means a replay is a genuinely different bracket rather than the same path twice. You can also play it at 8 or 16 slots for a shorter or longer run.
31 picks, 5 rounds
- Round of 3216 matchups
- Sweet 168 matchups
- Elite 84 matchups
- Final Four2 matchups
- Championship1 matchup
Roughly 2-4 minutes start to finish.
All 32 entrants
All 32 entrants are listed below, including 2Pac, The Notorious B.I.G., Jay-Z and Nas.
2Pac
1991-1996
The Notorious B.I.G.
1994-1997
Jay-Z
1996-present
Nas
1994-present
Kendrick Lamar
2011-present
Kanye West
2004-present
Eminem
1999-present
Drake
2009-present
J. Cole
2011-present
Lil Wayne
1999-present
Andre 3000 / OutKast
1994-present
Lauryn Hill
1996-present
Snoop Dogg
1993-present
Rakim
1987-present
Wu-Tang Clan
1993-present
Ice Cube
1989-present
Method Man
1993-present
Missy Elliott
1997-present
A Tribe Called Quest
1990-2016
Travis Scott
2013-present
Tyler, the Creator
2009-present
Nicki Minaj
2010-present
Future
2012-present
Megan Thee Stallion
2018-present
Run-D.M.C.
1981-2002
Public Enemy
1985-present
LL Cool J
1984-present
Dr. Dre
1988-present
50 Cent
2003-present
Chance the Rapper
2012-present
SZA
2017-present
Childish Gambino
2011-present
Would rather group them than rank them? Open all 32 in the tier list maker and sort them into S, A, B, C, D and F tiers instead — same entrants, no matchups.
How everyone else ranked them
Aggregated from 6 completed Greatest Hip-Hop Artists brackets. Win rate is the share of head-to-head matchups each entrant has won across every play.
- 1
Kanye West
19W - 4L · won 2 brackets
83%
win rate
- 2
Eminem
16W - 5L · won 1 bracket
76%
win rate
- 3
Kendrick Lamar
16W - 6L
73%
win rate
- 4
Nas
13W - 5L · won 1 bracket
72%
win rate
- 5
2Pac
12W - 5L · won 1 bracket
71%
win rate
- 6
Drake
14W - 6L
70%
win rate
- 7
Wu-Tang Clan
8W - 5L · won 1 bracket
62%
win rate
- 8
Andre 3000 / OutKast
9W - 6L
60%
win rate
- 9
J. Cole
7W - 6L
54%
win rate
- 10
Dr. Dre
7W - 6L
54%
win rate
Getting a ranking you actually agree with
- 1Go with the track you would rather hear right now — instant reaction beats a considered take.
- 2The default run puts all 32 tracks in the draw. Short on time? Drop to 16 slots — a quicker run over a random 16 of them.
- 3If a matchup genuinely splits you, undo and replay it — a coin-flip pick in round one distorts everything below it.
Greatest Hip-Hop Artists bracket FAQ
How many tracks are in the Greatest Hip-Hop Artists bracket?
The pool holds 32 tracks. A default run puts all of them in the draw and takes 31 picks across 5 rounds: Round of 32, Sweet 16, Elite 8, Final Four, Championship. Other field sizes are available too — 8, 16, 32 slots.
Which tracks are included?
2Pac, The Notorious B.I.G., Jay-Z, Nas, Kendrick Lamar, Kanye West, Eminem, Drake, J. Cole, Lil Wayne, Andre 3000 / OutKast and Lauryn Hill, plus 20 more. Every entrant is listed further down this page with its artwork.
How long does the rank rappers take?
About 2-4 minutes — 31 choices at the default size, or 7 if you drop to a 8-slot bracket. No account is needed, and you can abandon a run at any point without losing anything.
Can I turn the result into S/A/B tiers?
Both are here, and the bracket is closer to a tier list than it looks. It ends with a champion, a runner-up and then every other track grouped by the round it went out in — which is exactly a set of tiers, decided by 31 direct comparisons rather than by your first guess at a layout. What it deliberately does not do is claim a precise gap between two tracks that never met. If you would rather place the tracks into S through F rows yourself, the tier list maker loads all 32 of them at bracketranker.com/tier-list-maker.
Can I compare my order with other people's?
Every completed bracket feeds the Greatest Hip-Hop Artists community results page, which aggregates win rates across all plays and tracks how often each of the 32 entrants takes the title. It updates continuously, so it moves as more people play.
What if a track I wanted is missing?
Use the bracket maker: add your own tracks, name it, and share the link so other people play the same field. That is the route to take when this pool of 32 is missing something you would have picked, or when you want a version scoped to one era, label or franchise.