Age: 29

Last Year's Rank: 1

In 2015, a simple question took on existential weight for rap fans: Kendrick or Drake? Your answer revealed more than just musical preference, the thinking went; it revealed what kind of person you were. You had to pick a side.

In many ways, the binary was inevitable. In 2015, two all-time generational rap greats—and yes, it’s clear that both Drake and Kendrick are that—hit their respective creative peaks. Drake’s If You’re Reading This It's Too Late, released in February 2015, was the ultimate flex, a show of effortless alpha dominance. It sold 450,000 units its first week without any promotion or advance notice; Drake nonetheless shrugged it off as a mixtape, and later that summer he humiliated battle-tested rival Meek Mill. Kendrick, meanwhile, dropped To Pimp a Butterfly, a dark, dense behemoth filled with dissonant jazz improvisation, Tupac references, and fearless philosophizing on race, poverty, violence, sex, incarceration, and more. The most challenging mainstream rap album since Kanye’s Yeezus, Butterfly didn’t produce any radio hits, but it topped most critics’ year-end lists and won a Grammy; more tellingly, single “Alright” became the unofficial theme song of the Black Lives Matter movement.

On one end, you had Kendrick, hip-hop's conscience and foremost critical darling, who specialized in tangled wordplay and rapping about the problems of the world; on the other, Drake, rap's id, the people’s favorite, who excelled in club anthems and rapping about himself and his conquests. It was easy to see them as opposites, a classic rap dichotomy in the vein of 2001 Nas and Jay-Z. But it wasn’t necessarily easy to choose a favorite.

A lot’s changed in a year.

In the past 12 months, Drake has enjoyed the most commercially dominant stretch of his career, topping the Billboard 200 and Hot 100 charts for 10 weeks each with new album Views and single “One Dance,” his first solo No. 1. But this list is about rap music, not receipts, and there’s really no question who’s been better at that over the past year: Kendrick.

At the top of 2016, Kendrick released untitled unmastered, a compilation of unvarnished but excellent Butterfly leftovers that by itself is one of the year's best rap projects. Kendrick's appearances on The Tonight Show and the Grammys were among the most memorable live hip-hop performances network television has seen outside of Kanye West on Saturday Night Live. His feature on the Black Hippy remix of ScHoolboy Q’s “THat Part” is one of the most masterful examples of internal rhyme schemes in recent memory. He delivered standout verses on two of the best songs from two of 2016’s best albums, “Freedom” on Beyoncé’s Lemonade and “No More Parties in L.A.” on Kanye West’s The Life of Pablo .

Kendrick’s appearance on those two albums makes sense—in some ways, Butterfly opened doors for both. All three are unapologetically risky statement records from superstars that bravely challenge the expectations of white America and the music industry; all three eschew radio-ready singles for emotional impact and artistic daring. Pablo mirrored Butterfly in its messy but beautiful bloat; Lemonade bravely followed up its themes of black empowerment and survival in a hostile environment. After those albums, Views, which features Drake once again alternating between his usual sung seductions and rapped boasts, seems safe, small, even petty in comparison. Drake is undeniably hip-hop's commercial king, but in 2016 it became clear that Kendrick is its thought leader.

We don’t know what or when Kendrick’s next project will be, but given the streak he's on it will certainly be the most critically anticipated release of any genre in months. It’s probably cheating to include his backup vocals on “Skyline To,” from Frank Ocean’s Blonde , in this discussion of his dominance in 2016. Still, Kendrick has appeared on all but one of the four best and boldest albums of 2016 ( Chance the Rapper’s Coloring Book is the notable exception). We don't think that's a coincidence. —Alex Gale

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