This week, The Juice has a special treat for you all.
In conjunction with Billboard’s very knowledgeable chart department, we’ve compiled a list of the top 50 R&B/Hip-Hop artists of the last 25 years, topped by the Pied Piper himself, R. Kelly, and rounded off by usual players like Eminem, Luther Vandross and Jay-Z, among others.
The Top 50 R&B / Hip-Hop Artists of the Past 25 Years
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Now, before you get your panties in a bunch about those artists that didn’t make the top 50 or the order in which the ones that made it are in, let me explain how we came up with the list. The tally is based on actual performance on the weekly Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs and Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums charts from Jan. 5, 1985, issue to the charts dated Nov. 6, 2010. Artists are ranked based on an inverse point system, which just means that who ever spent the most weeks at No. 1 earned greater value than those that spent most time at the lower end of the chart.
And since the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs and Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums charts were implemented in Dec. 1992 by Nielsen, we’ve got our backs covered on that too. To ensure equitable representation from all 25 years, earlier time frames were weighted to account for the difference between turnover rates from those years and the turnover rates that have occurred since the advent of Nielsen Music data.
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Now, dissect the list, tear it apart, put it back together, and make sure to leave your comments below.