@Okasha Ali

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Druggy, raw, slick, and surreal, Future’s singular sound helped to redefine 2010s street rap as something strange and almost avant-garde. Imagine trap as modern psychedelia, though still naggingly melodic. Future has a way of bending his voice into soulful, often sad shapes that are half-rapped and half-sung—epitomized by his 2017 blockbuster “Mask Off.” His unwavering self-assurance continues to define his work as he settles into middle age. Rather than mellowing with the years, he remains outspoken and unapologetic about his rock-star lifestyle and chemical excesses, as heard on 2022’s “WAIT FOR YOU” alongside Drake and Tems, and 2024’s addled “Like That” with Kendrick Lamar and Metro Boomin. Showing unusual staying power across the shifting sands of smaller trends and wider eras alike, Future has lost none of his heavyweight status in the years since his groggy, grandiose breakthrough—whether he’s casually dropping labyrinthine mixtapes or commanding superstar cameos.

With an omnivorous sound that reflects influences from all over the map, A$AP Rocky first emerged as a photogenic symbol of rap’s extended cultural reach in the 2010s. He broke out from Harlem’s A$AP Mob crew with his instantly catchy 2011 debut single “Peso,” casually rapping about being “that pretty motherfucker” while showing off his unique sense of style. Its success certainly wasn’t a fluke, and the next year he was holding court with Drake, Kendrick Lamar, and 2 Chainz for the tongue-in-cheek horniness of “F**kin’ Problems,” a track that went multiplatinum in multiple countries. The genius of A$AP Rocky is how he can pull together disparate elements and make them feel perfectly natural together, like how 2015’s “Everyday” recruits celebrity producer Mark Ronson and R&B star Miguel on a low-slung banger that samples vintage Rod Stewart. In the years since, he has recontextualized everything from Moby’s floaty ambience (2018’s “A$AP Forever”) to indie folk singer Jessica Pratt’s creaky croon (2024’s “HIGHJACK”) in the same fashion that he might mix and match wildly different items from his wardrobe. No matter which direction he might cast his savvy eye, Rocky’s sly charm and rock-solid confidence shine through in every bar he delivers.

The first time PARTYNEXTDOOR went to a show was when he performed onstage with Drake. It wasn’t because he hadn’t had the opportunity. He just thought of music as a private thing, an experience that depends on a sense of vulnerability that big gatherings just can’t get across. He told Apple Music he often makes records right after the event that inspired them so as to keep the feeling as fresh as possible. “Like, maybe she walked out of the house,” he said. “And how I deal with things is, OK, walk right upstairs to the studio and take it in one cut, and call my homeboys. And they’re like, ‘Really? But she just left.’” It’s a raw approach. But the commitment to intimacy that makes PND protective of his music has also made him one of the more influential R&B artists of the 2010s and beyond, both as a solo performer and a writer/producer for Drake, Rihanna, DJ Khaled, and others. Born Jahron Anthony Brathwaite in Mississauga, Ontario, in 1993, PND joined up with Drake’s OVO crew in the early 2010s and helped to shape the downcast, emotive sound that has more or less defined modern R&B. You can hear that signature across all his songs, whether he’s exploring romantic ambivalence on “LOYAL” and “Not Nice” or soundtracking late-night hedonism on “WEST DISTRICT,” “FREAK IN YOU,” and “M a k e I t T o T h e M o r n I n g.”

The man born Dwayne Carter was barely a teenager when he first signed to Bryan “Birdman” Williams’ Cash Money Records, appearing initially as one half of The B.G.’z, a group that featured a slightly older, if not similarly revered New Orleans MC, B.G. Lil Wayne’s star, was, of course, too bright to be contained in a group; young Wayne launched his solo career with 1999’s <i>Tha Block is Hot</i>, starting him on a path to hip-hop immortality, the MC having delivered both hits and phrasings—“bling bling,” anyone?—that remain canon in the genre. He rapped alongside the biggest voices of every generation: The JAY-Zs (“Mr. Carter”), DMXs (“Kant Nobody”), and Eminems (“Drop the World”) who dominated his adolescence, the Rick Rosses (“John”), Futures (“Love Me”), and T-Pains (“Got Money”) who defined the transition from the 2000s into the 2010s, and pretty much everyone else who thought wise enough to align their own creative practices with his in their moment. 2Chainz (“Rich As F**k”) was wise enough to drop two separate collaborative albums with him. This is to say nothing of the wealth of voices his junior who proudly admit to having refined their own artistry in his image, the most successful of whom he’d have a heavy hand in developing—Drake (“Right Above It”) and Nicki Minaj (“Dark Side of the Moon”). Wayne’s propensity for hitmaking, in fact, is not unlike the unending collection of tattoos he so frequently shows off, in that just when you think he couldn’t possibly have another, he proves that he’ll never run out of ideas, and there will always be a place for them.

Nobody makes feeling bad sound as good as The Weeknd. Even the singer’s sunniest tracks (“Can’t Feel My Face,” “Starboy”) feel anchored by darkness—the sense that pleasure is pain and beauty decays and you can’t have the night without the morning after. The brainchild of Toronto singer Abel Tesfaye, the project took off in 2011 with a string of mixtapes that forged cavernous, falsetto-driven R&B with narratives drenched in drugs, sex, and other regrettable decisions—a sound both sensuous and detached, featherlight and dead heavy. His music has become a symbol of hedonism pushed to bleak excess, with songs—“The Hills,” “Often,” “Earned It (Fifty Shades of Grey),” “After Hours”—whose narrators can’t seem to say no even if they’ll hate themselves for it later. And though the sound has gotten a little brighter over time (“In Your Eyes,” “Take My Breath”), the prevailing mood remains heavy, even unsettling—the ride you want more of even when you’ve had too much.

Brooklyn’s Shawn “JAY-Z” Carter had already been a well-charting rapper for a few years when he levelled up with his 1998 breakthrough, the <i>Annie</i>-sampling “Hard Knock Life (Ghetto Anthem).” But that sizable hit allowed the former drug dealer to fully graduate “from grams to Grammys”—as he later rapped—and make a convincing case for being the world’s greatest MC. While early hits like 2000’s “Big Pimpin’” leaned hard into that street cred, by the following year he had perfected his self-mythologized image as an unbeatable rapper turned cigar-puffing mogul with “Izzo (H.O.V.A.)” and its culture-shifting source album <i>The Blueprint</i>. Carter’s dream combination of lyrical dexterity, commercial polish, unshakable swagger, and artistic risk-taking came through in repeat collabs with rising producers like Kanye West and Just Blaze, not to mention such industry mainstays as Timbaland on “Dirt off Your Shoulder” and Rick Rubin on “99 Problems,” both from 2004. With 2009’s Alicia Keys teamup “Empire State of Mind,” Carter proved that he could command a pop smash while retaining his hip-hop bona fides and shrugging off multiple would-be retirements. He continued to work with West even after the latter had become a rapper and household name in his own right, leading to multiple hits like 2011’s “Ni**as in Paris” and “Otis.” Even once Carter slowed down in the years since 2013’s Justin Timberlake collab “Holy Grail,” he has remained a very visible public supporter of his wife Beyoncé and a permanent fixture on rap’s Mount Rushmore.