Greatest rapperof all time?

Who's the greatest rapper of all time? Lil Wayne leads Tupac Shakur by 85 points.

Ten matchups, about a minute. Or just tap a photo.

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The table

Rating ± certainty · updates live

Pos	Contender	Matches	Rating	Win %
1	Lil Wayne Tha Carter III: about 1M first week	2	1,747 ±253	74%
2	Tupac Shakur First solo rapper in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame	1	1,662 ±290	67%
3	Eminem First rap song to win an Oscar	0	1,500 ±350	50%
4	Kendrick Lamar Pulitzer Prize for Music (2018)	0	1,500 ±350	50%
5	Jay-Z First rapper in the Songwriters Hall of Fame	0	1,500 ±350	50%
6	Nas Illmatic	2	1,500 ±253	50%
7	Drake One of the most-streamed artists ever	0	1,500 ±350	50%
8	Rakim Pioneer of complex internal rhyme	0	1,500 ±350	50%
9	The Notorious B.I.G. Ready to Die, Life After Death	1	1,338 ±290	33%
10	Missy Elliott First female rapper in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame	2	1,253 ±253	26%

Ratings use Glicko, a version of chess's Elo that also tracks how sure we are (the ± figure). Beat a higher-rated rival and you gain more, and the less sure we are about a contender, the more one vote moves them. On the real site the official table is recalculated from all votes every few minutes, so a matchup that gets voted on a lot doesn't count extra. Why a chess rating and not upvotes?

Missing someone?

Nominate a contender or back someone else's nomination. When 500 readers back the same name, it joins the field after a quick check.

Fair play

Nobody picks matchups by hand. Every visitor gets their own stream, drawn by a matchmaker that spreads votes across the whole field.

Least-seen first. Contenders with few matches come up more, so new entries get rated fast.
Unsure ratings first. The bigger the ± on a rating, the more often it gets tested.
Close contests. Evenly matched pairs tell us more than mismatches.
Wildcards and no repeats. One matchup in seven is fully random, and you never see the same pair twice.

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