Suppose Rap was a competitive sport and rappers posted points for their cities each year with album sales. Which city would hold the most "championships"? [Analysis/Discussion]
Started thinking about the above and began looking at album sales each year since 1987. Here's what I came up with. Don't expect this to be authoritative, but it's enough to get a discussion going.
Disclaimers:
-Some years, there would be one hot rapper from one city, but a big cluster of rappers from another city who had more album sales total.
-In some cases it was hard to determine a clear winner because lots of cities had good entries. In that case I would choose the act with the single highest record sales and single biggest first week debut.
-some rappers were hard to classify because they moved from other regions. When in doubt I would assign them to the city where they were located when they recorded the album in question and hit it big, and/or who their producers were (e.g., 2pac and Young MC). Consider them "trades".
| Year | MVPs | City Champion |
|---|---|---|
| . | . | . |
| 1987 | LL Cool J | New York |
| 1988 | NWA/Eazy-E | Los Angeles |
| 1989 | Tone Loc / Young MC / Dust Brothers | Los Angeles |
| 1990 | MC Hammer | Bay Area |
| 1991 | Cypress Hill / NWA / Ice Cube | Los Angeles |
| 1992 | Dr. Dre | Los Angeles |
| 1993 | Snoop Doggy Dogg / Cypress Hill | Los Angeles |
| 1994 | Notorious BIG / Beastie Boys / Method Man | New York |
| 1995 | Bone Thug N' Harmony / Coolio / Tha Dogg Pound | Los Angeles |
| 1996 | 2PAC / Makaveli / RATM / Snoop Doggy Dogg | Los Angeles |
| 1997 | Puff Daddy / Notorious BIG / Mase | New York |
| 1998 | DMX (x2) / Jay-Z / Beastie Boys | New York |
| 1999 | Jay-Z / DMX / Ruff Ryders / Nas | New York |
| 2000 | Eminem | Detroit |
| 2001 | Ja Rule / Jay-Z / Nas / DMX | New York |
| 2002 | Eminem | Detroit |
| 2003 | 50 Cent / Jay-Z / G-Unit / DMX | New York |
| 2004 | Eminem / D12 | Detroit |
| 2005 | 50 Cent | New York |
| 2006 | TI / Ludacris / Outkast | Atlanta |
| 2007 | Kanye West / Lupe Fiasco | Chicago |
| 2008 | Lil Wayne | New Orleans |
| 2009 | Black Eyed Peas | Los Angeles |
| 2010 | Eminem | Detroit |
| 2011 | lil Wayne | New Orleans |
| 2012 | Kendrick Lamar | Los Angeles |
| 2013 | Eminem | Detroit |
| 2014 | J Cole / Nicki Minaj | New York |
| 2015 | Drake / Drake + Future | Toronto |
| 2016 | Drake | Toronto |
| 2017 | Kendrick Lamar | Los Angeles |
| 2018 | Drake | Toronto |
| 2019 | Post Malone (2 albums) | ? |
| 2020 | Juice WRLD | Chicago |
| 2021 | Drake | Toronto |
| 2022 | Future | Atlanta |
| 2023 | Travis Scott | Houston |
Some thoughts:
- Los Angeles has held the most championships since 1987, with 10 (to be fair New York would have won every year prior to that in the early years of the league)
- Eminem singlehandedly (well, a little assist from D12) won 5 championships for Detroit. Drake brought 4 to Toronto. Lil Wayne brought it to New Orleans twice.
- Chicago only had two championships, and one was delivered by Juice WRLD. Kanye gets a lot of respect but he was rarely the biggest artist commercially in any given year.
- Atlanta underperformed relative to my expectations. Outkast put up good numbers for many of their albums but was rarely the biggest commercial force, even in their heydays.
Overall, the "team" analogy worked well in the 90s, but seems to have broken down in recent years, with the top artists coming from a wide variety of different locations. Not even sure how to classify Post Malone by city for example, and there are a lot more guys like him these days, both artistically and geographically. A lot of the newer acts don't fit into any one particular scene or represent any one particular region. This Balkanization served Toronto well, because no other area could compete with the kinds of numbers Drake puts up all by himself.
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source https://www.reddit.com/r/hiphopheads/comments/17u8g84/suppose_rap_was_a_competitive_sport_and_rappers/
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