Curated playlist
Grammy Award winners for rap music
- EminemEminem performed with Elton John at the 43rd Grammy Awards while GLAAD protested outside.
- Black Eyed PeasThe Black Eyed Peas topped the Billboard Hot 100 for 26 straight weeks in 2009. No artist had done it longer by then.
- Kanye WestKanye West recorded "Through the Wire" with his jaw still wired shut. A 2002 car accident had shattered it.
- Jay-ZNo major label would sign Jay-Z, so he sold burned CDs out of his car.
- Roddy RicchRoddy Ricch spent eighteen weeks atop the Hot 100 in 2020, more than any other artist that year.
- Drake (musician)Drake's 2006 mixtape Room for Improvement sold roughly 6,000 copies and earned him $304.04.
- BeyoncéOn the 13th of December 2013, Beyoncé released a complete album on the iTunes Store with no warning and no promotion. Within six days it had sold one million digital copies, a record for any album on iTunes at the time. The artist behind…
- Dr. DreDr. Dre's G-funk had live musicians replay funk melodies instead of sampling them. It debuted on The Chronic.
- RihannaRobyn Rihanna Fenty, known worldwide as Rihanna, once waited in Jay-Z's office while lawyers finished drawing up a six-album contract with Def Jam Recordings. The music executive Antonio "L.A." Reid had told Jay-Z not to let the teenager…
- Justin TimberlakeJustin Timberlake was 11 years old when he appeared on the television show Star Search and sang country songs under the name Justin Randall. The boy from Memphis, Tennessee would one day be dubbed the Prince of Pop. Billboard would name…
- Beastie BoysThe Beastie Boys, an American hip-hop trio from New York City, once set off a worldwide run of car thefts without ever touching a car. Around the time their debut album came out, Mike D began appearing on stage and in publicity photographs…
- Fergie (singer)Fergie, born Stacy Ann Ferguson, sang on a song that held the top spot on the Billboard Hot 100 for 14 straight weeks in 2009. That song, "I Gotta Feeling," stayed at number one longer than any other song that year. By then her records had…
- Pharrell WilliamsPharrell Williams, the American musician, songwriter, record producer and fashion designer, was once behind a startling share of the songs on the radio. An August 2003 survey cited by The Age found that his production duo, the Neptunes,…
- Lil WayneLil Wayne left school in tenth grade after his mother found a gun in his bag.
- OutkastOutkast got booed at the 1995 Source Awards, then answered with one line.
- Queen LatifahQueen Latifah picked her name from a book of Arabic names at age eight. She added the title "Queen" herself.
- Tyler, the CreatorAt the age of seven, Tyler Gregory Okonma, known professionally as Tyler, the Creator, was already making albums that did not exist. He pulled the covers out of CD cases and made new ones for imaginary records, each with a tracklist and…
- Will SmithWill Smith turned down the lead role in The Matrix to make Wild Wild West. He later called that choice a mistake.
- Linkin ParkLinkin Park formed in 1996 in Agoura Hills, California, a suburb of Los Angeles, and went on to sell more than 100 million records worldwide. Its founders were high school friends with a bedroom studio and no record deal. Years of…
- Lauryn HillLauryn Hill stood at the 41st Annual Grammy Awards and said, "This is crazy. This is hip-hop!" She had just become the first woman to win five Grammys in a single night. Her wins spanned album, song, vocal performance and best new artist,…
- MC HammerMC Hammer started out as an 11-year-old selling baseballs in a parking lot. The Oakland A's owner hired him on the spot.
- Missy ElliottMissy Elliott and Timbaland wrote and produced nine tracks on Aaliyah's 1996 album One in a Million.
- Sean CombsSean Combs founded Bad Boy Records, which launched the Notorious B.I.G. He was later sentenced to four years in prison.
- Kendrick LamarKendrick Lamar won the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 2018, the first for a piece outside classical and jazz.
- Cardi BCardi B reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100 chart dated the 25th of September 2017, with a song called "Bodak Yellow." No solo female rapper had topped that chart since Lauryn Hill's "Doo Wop (That Thing)" in 1998. The woman behind…
- 50 Cent50 Cent was shot nine times in 2000, then blacklisted by the music industry. He built his comeback on mixtapes.
- Alicia KeysAlicia Keys was fifteen years old when Columbia Records tried to win her signature with a $26,000 white baby grand piano. She took the deal. It began a long struggle over who would decide what her music sounded like. Years later she summed…
- LL Cool JLL Cool J became the first rapper to receive the Kennedy Center Honors in 2017.
- Kid CudiKid Cudi was born Scott Ramon Seguro Mescudi in Cleveland on the 30th of January 1984. One day, while he was working at the BAPE store in New York, Kanye West came in and bought a few jackets. Cudi had forgotten to remove a security sensor…
- Ice-TIce-T got his stage name when friends heard him recite novels by Iceberg Slim.
- Lil JonLil Jon, the yelling voice of crunk, later made two albums of guided meditation.
- DJ Jazzy JeffDJ Jazzy Jeff went home in tears after winning a Grammy. He had just $500 in his bank account.