How the Greatest Rap Albums bracket works
Rank rap albums without dragging anything into rows. You get one matchup at a time — Illmatic or Ready to Die? My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy or To Pimp a Butterfly? — and after 31 picks the bracket has a champion, with everything else placed by how far it got. Nobody can hold 32 tracks in their head at once, but everybody can answer "this one" — so the order you end up with is one you will actually stand behind.
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. Because the draw is shuffled, two people playing the same bracket rarely face the same matchups. 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 Illmatic, Ready to Die, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy and To Pimp a Butterfly.
Illmatic
Nas - 1994
Ready to Die
The Notorious B.I.G. - 1994
My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy
Kanye West - 2010
To Pimp a Butterfly
Kendrick Lamar - 2015
Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers)
Wu-Tang Clan - 1993
The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill
Lauryn Hill - 1998
Aquemini
OutKast - 1998
good kid, m.A.A.d city
Kendrick Lamar - 2012
The Blueprint
Jay-Z - 2001
The Marshall Mathers LP
Eminem - 2000
Me Against the World
2Pac - 1995
Reasonable Doubt
Jay-Z - 1996
The Chronic
Dr. Dre - 1992
All Eyez on Me
2Pac - 1996
Midnight Marauders
A Tribe Called Quest - 1993
Stankonia
OutKast - 2000
Paid in Full
Eric B. & Rakim - 1987
The Score
Fugees - 1996
Doggystyle
Snoop Dogg - 1993
Madvillainy
Madvillain - 2004
The College Dropout
Kanye West - 2004
It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back
Public Enemy - 1988
Only Built 4 Cuban Linx...
Raekwon - 1995
Life After Death
The Notorious B.I.G. - 1997
DAMN.
Kendrick Lamar - 2017
Rodeo
Travis Scott - 2015
Take Care
Drake - 2011
IGOR
Tyler, the Creator - 2019
Flower Boy
Tyler, the Creator - 2017
SOS
SZA - 2022
GNX
Kendrick Lamar - 2024
ASTROWORLD
Travis Scott - 2018
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 7 completed Greatest Rap Albums brackets. Win rate is the share of head-to-head matchups each entrant has won across every play.
- 1
ASTROWORLD
17W - 5L · won 2 brackets
77%
win rate
- 2
My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy
18W - 7L
72%
win rate
- 3
Illmatic
15W - 6L · won 1 bracket
71%
win rate
- 4
DAMN.
15W - 6L · won 1 bracket
71%
win rate
- 5
Madvillainy
13W - 6L · won 1 bracket
68%
win rate
- 6
To Pimp a Butterfly
12W - 6L · won 1 bracket
67%
win rate
- 7
Take Care
11W - 6L · won 1 bracket
65%
win rate
- 8
The Marshall Mathers LP
9W - 7L
56%
win rate
- 9
The Chronic
9W - 7L
56%
win rate
- 10
Ready to Die
8W - 7L
53%
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.
- 3Use undo the moment you regret a pick. One reflex answer in an early round can knock out a favourite before it gets going.
Greatest Rap Albums bracket FAQ
How many tracks are in the Greatest Rap Albums 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?
Illmatic, Ready to Die, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, To Pimp a Butterfly, Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers), The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, Aquemini, good kid, m.A.A.d city, The Blueprint, The Marshall Mathers LP, Me Against the World and Reasonable Doubt, plus 20 more. Every entrant is listed further down this page with its artwork.
How long does the rank rap albums take?
About 2-4 minutes — 31 choices at the default size, or 7 if you drop to a 8-slot bracket. It works the same on a phone as on a desktop, and no login is involved.
How does this compare to a drag-and-drop tier list maker?
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.
How did everyone else rank these tracks?
Every completed bracket feeds the Greatest Rap Albums 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.
Can I build my own greatest rap albums bracket?
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.