WordofSouth

Popular rap magazine XXL made a list of rappers again this year. They’re supposed to be famous by next year. A few of them will be, but
mostly because they’re already famous today.

They really busted out the demographic dart board for this one. White people! Teenybop kiddies! Lyrically lyrical fast rappers! Generic Southerners! Half the Def Jam roster! Two people from Compton! Based God! Surely making a list like this is damn near impossible given how fractured hip hop has become, but this seems like a particularly slapdash selection. At the peak of this list – Yela, B, Kendrick, Meek – there’s more talent, creativity and promise than the previous two years combined, but the lows are far lower than they’ve ever been.

You’ll also notice that the average # of Twitter followers is way up from last year. I’m sure part of that has to do with an increased ubiquity of Twitter, but it does feel like, on the whole, these guys are a lot better known than they were in the past. Which is good and bad. It certainly lowers XXL’s risk of being proven wrong, but it also makes it far less interesting. The rise of Twitter plays another factor here – a few months ago XXL’s editors took to the Tweets, asking users for suggestions. Which could account for the wider variety. Now they’re not just drawing from the Nah Right/Dope Boyz axis, but the big wide world of computer rap. Meek and Fred are more or less the only artists on this list with anything even resembling an old fashioned street rep. There also seems to be more unsigned and indie artists here than in past years but it’s hard to say if a lot of these dudes aren’t just secretly signed.