Best US rappers

20 ELO points separate Eminem from Kanye West at the top of the Rap ranking, after 1928 duels.

Eminem holds the top spot with 1341 ELO points, winning 59% of his 266 duels. Kanye West trails at 1321 points with an identical win rate across 253 duels. Kendrick Lamar claims third place at 1279 points, while the sharpest divide in the ranking appears between Tupac Shakur (2Pac) at fourth and Travis Scott at fifth: 45 ELO points split the two, marking the clearest break in voter preference across the entire TopList. At the opposite end, Jay-Z ranks 14th with 1125 points despite his veteran status, while Nicki Minaj sits last at 1023 points with a 35% win rate over 214 duels, revealing a community that still leans heavily toward the genre's traditional male voices.

This ranking draws on 1928 duels cast by 47 players weighing 15 contenders against each other. Updated on 11 October 2026, it reflects real-time shifts in taste as the community continues to vote. Head to VAINKEURZ to cast your own duels and reshape the leaderboard: every matchup you judge moves the ELO scores and redefines who leads the conversation around US rap.

Updated on October 11, 2026

How this ranking is computed

Every duel won lifts a contender and every loss drops them, by an amount that depends on the opponent's strength: beating the leader is worth more than beating the last. It is an ELO, the same principle as in chess. Duels are not drawn at random — an adaptive entropy sort puts the least predictable match-ups first, which settles the ranking far faster than a full round robin. A worldwide ranking is only published past 30 completed plays. Known limit: a contender who has faced few opponents keeps an approximate score, and the bottom of the table moves more than the podium.

How our rankings are made →