Atlanta is, and has been for quite some time, the undisputed capital of hip-hop. What’s most fascinating about the city’s musical dominance — aside from how long its occupied the throne — is the limitless collection of superstar MCs its churned out over the past twenty years. Ever since Outkast exploded into the mainstream in the late-‘90s, a new crop of talent has risen from the ATL every three to five years: Ludacris, T.I. and Young Jeezy (early-‘00s), Gucci and Waka (late-‘00s), Future, 2 Chainz, and Young Thug (early-‘10s), and Migos, Rae Sremmurd, 21 Savage, and Lil’ Yachty (mid-‘10s).
The city’s inexhaustible succession of talent leads one to wonder, ‘Which Atlanta rapper had the greatest peak?’ Or, more specifically, ‘What’s the best year an Atlanta MC has ever had?’ In order to find out, we’re going to select the 16 most-popular Atlanta hip-hop acts since 2000, choose the year in which they were at their creative, commercial, and cultural peak, and make them go head-to-head in a March Madness style bracket.
So let’s evaluate our contenders.
Seeds were determined by the number of albums each rapper sold in its specific year. (The more albums sold, the higher the seed).
