In hip hop, so much can be explained by the rise and fall of record labels.

Lil Wayne's ascent is the story of Cash Money. The Dirty South starts with LaFace Records. The east-coast/west-coast feud is Bad Boy vs. Death Row. In hip hop, the artist-label relationship isn’t just a business deal, but a commitment to an identity.

We wanted to surface the notable labels in hip hop’s history, so we measured every label by its artists' chart performance on Billboard (collaborating with Kevin Beacham of Rhymesayers to call out insights). By highlighting the labels who produced the most hits at any given time, we’d understand who was wielding enormous influence on hip hop's sound, distribution, and direction.

Here’s the stats for 600+ labels over the past 25 years:

The Most Successful Labels in Hip Hop Hip Hop Labels, sorted by their Artists' Performance* on Billboard's Rap Chart (1989-present)

SEARCH: All NY LA ATL NOLA SF MIA

Label's top artists include: LABEL # OF CHARTING TRACKS # OF CHARTING ARTISTS CUMULATIVE WEEKS ON CHART YEARS CHARTING Weeks on Chart by Year 1989 2015

*Using the Billboard "Hot Rap Songs" chart. We weight a label's tracks based on its chart rank (#1 - #50) and weeks charted. Note that the label-to-artist assignment is very difficult and complex, and in general assigned an artist to whatever label he/she would call out at the start of a track.

The top ten list reads like a history of hip hop. Def Jam, the pioneer label in hip hop, is properly at #1. Young Money has only been active for the past six years, and it’s at #2, exemplifying the current state of hip hop and its concentration in one place.

Let’s look at just 1989, the launch of Billboard’s “Hot Rap Singles” chart: