Every year, Rap Madness rolls around like hip-hop’s own March Madness bracket—but instead of buzzer-beaters, we get bar-for-bar showdowns and a whole lot of fan debates in the comments. Over the years, the winners of Rap Madness haven’t just been popular—they’ve been unignorable. These are the artists who dominated timelines, hijacked the charts, and made the culture spin on their axis.
From Travis Scott’s blockbuster Utopia era in 2023, to 21 Savage’s unstoppable streak of features and his Drake tag-team moment, to Ye turning Donda into a worldwide listening event saga, each Rap Madness champion left no doubt about who ran the game that year.
In case you forgot, Rap Madness voting is typically based on the year prior. The winner of 2024 was recognized for their accomplishments in 2023. Over the last five years, each winner brought something seismic to the table and deserved to get their flowers as top dawgs of the bracket. Below, we run it back.
2024 Winner: Travis Scott
Travis Scott didn’t just drop an album in 2023—he dropped the most highly anticipated album of the year. After five long years of fans foaming at the mouth waiting for a follow-up to Astroworld, Travis emerged from the creative abyss and delivered Utopia on July 28. And the numbers? Stupid. Nearly half a million units in the first week, a No. 1 Billboard debut, and all 19 tracks charted on the Hot 100.
As if the album wasn’t enough of a flex, he invited literally everyone to the party: Beyoncé, Playboi Carti, Young Thug, Future, and Drake (who, true to form, brought the passive-aggressive energy on “Meltdown” and sneak-dissed everybody from Pusha T to Timothée Chalamet—yes, really). Utopia was part rap spectacle, part celebrity Thunderdome.
Still, Travis didn’t just sit back and count streams. He made his inner film bro proud by dropping the film Circus Maximus, Scott’s directorial debut, which premiered at select AMC theaters. Naturally, that led to the Circus Maximus Tour, taking the Utopia chaos across the U.S. like a traveling hip-hop fever dream. In conclusion, Rap Madness 2024 wasn’t even close. Travis Scott turned his comeback into a cinematic universe.
2023 Winner: 21 Savage
21 Savage kicked things off in 2022 on JID’s “Surround Sound,” where he casually dropped one of the hardest verses of the year and helped spawn a full-blown TikTok movement. The real game-changer, though? “Jimmy Cooks.” The final track on Drake’s album Honestly, Nevermind was eaten up by the fans, debuting at No. 1 on the Hot 100 (securing his second top U.S. single). Just a casual chart-topper to warm up for the main event.
Enter Her Loss—21 Savage and Drake’s full collaborative album, aka The Toxic Bro Handbook Vol. 1. It dropped on November 4, 2022 and debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200. It also pulled over 500 million streams in its first week (fourth biggest streaming week ever for an album), and shoved all 16 tracks onto the Hot 100—eight of which broke the Top 10.
Just to make sure no one forgot who was running things that year, 21 pulled up to Coachella and Amazon Music Live, delivering sets so tight they needed a seatbelt. 21 Savage was everywhere — quietly racking up stats, out-rapping your favorite rapper, and doing it all without breaking a sweat. He had Rap Madness 2023 in the bag.
2022 Winner: Ye
Before Donda even hit streaming services, Ye pulled off three stadium-sized listening events that were part concert, part performance art. Each one was a cinematic flex that only Ye could pull off—and they turned the rollout into a spectacle. People were literally selling bags of air from the shows. Yes, air.
Then came the actual drop: Donda finally landed on August 29, 2021, and Ye broke the Internet again. It debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200, clocked 309,000 first-week sales (the biggest first-week launch of the year), and flooded streaming platforms. Donda became one of the most-streamed albums of 2021 across Apple Music, topping charts in 152 countries. On top of everything else, twenty-three tracks from the album hit the Hot 100 at the same time. To celebrate, he launched the Stem Player, a physical gadget that let fans remix the album in real time.
Ye would go on to drop a deluxe version in November with five new tracks. He also picked up a Grammy for Jesus Is King during all of this. In short: Ye didn’t win Rap Madness 2022 by accident. He staged an operatic rollout, obliterated streaming records, dropped an album that sounded like a gospel rave in space, and made it all feel like performance art.
2021 Winner: Eminem
Eminem didn’t need a massive rollout, a TikTok challenge, or a flaming stadium entrance to win Rap Madness 2021—he just pulled the old “drop the album while everyone’s asleep” move. Twice. First came Music to Be Murdered By on January 17, 2020, a surprise release that crashed into the Billboard 200 at No. 1, giving him his 10th consecutive No. 1 album.
The album wasn’t just chart bait either—he kicked things off with “Darkness,” a haunting track that flipped the Las Vegas shooting into a first-person narrative that doubled as a PSA for gun control. Not bad for a guy who used to rap about chainsaws. “Godzilla” with the late Juice WRLD tore through the Hot 100 and peaked at #3. Then there was “The Adventures of Moon Man & Slim Shady” with Kid Cudi—because why not drop a cosmic collab while you’re already on fire?
Just when fans caught their breath, boom—on December 18, he dropped Music to Be Murdered By – Side B, adding 16 new tracks with no promo and no warning. Just pure chaos. Again. In between all that, the rapper showed up at the Oscars that year to perform “Lose Yourself,” which won Best Original Song back in 2003. Bottom line? Em didn’t campaign for the crown in 2021. He ambushed it.
2020 Winner: Lil Uzi Vert
After announcing a surprise “retirement” in January 2019, Uzi did what any chaotic rap star would do: dropped “Free Uzi” out of nowhere in March like a bat signal for the die-hards. They weren’t done, though. A few weeks later, they followed up with two singles—“That’s a Rack” and “Sanguine Paradise”—giving fans a taste of what Eternal Atake might sound like (if it ever came out). At this point, Uzi had turned the album delay into an art form. There were label disputes, public pleas, cryptic tweets, and even a dramatic team-up with Roc Nation just to get some management help.
Despite the chaos, he stayed present—and loud. At Rolling Loud in May, he told the crowd Eternal Atake was wrapping up. Fans believed him (kind of). But the delays kept coming, turning the album into more of a myth than Bigfoot. Then, in December 2019, Uzi dropped the heat that would help solidify his Rap Madness crown: “Futsal Shuffle 2020.”
The track was an instant hit, coming in hot with a dance challenge so contagious it broke TikTok’s spine. The numbers also backed it up: the song debuted at number five on the Hot 100, Uzi’s highest solo debut ever. Eternal Atake eventually dropped in March 2020, and although it was technically past the qualifying dates for Rap Madness —it was top of mind for everyone who voted.
Uzi won Rap Madness 2020 by holding the rap game hostage, surviving label warfare, making dance floors erupt, and giving us chaotic, futuristic heat when we needed it most.
2025 Winner?
So, who’s taking the crown this year? The field is stacked, and the energy is volatile. Will a new-gen breakout crash the bracket? Will a seasoned vet make a comeback run? If past winners taught us anything, it’s that domination comes in many forms—whether it’s surprise drops, internet-breaking stunts, or just straight-up streaming supremacy.
