{"id":35222,"date":"2025-07-25T02:25:07","date_gmt":"2025-07-25T02:25:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/35222\/"},"modified":"2025-07-25T02:25:07","modified_gmt":"2025-07-25T02:25:07","slug":"complexs-rap-media-rankings-crown-kai-cenat-dj-akademiks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/35222\/","title":{"rendered":"Complex’s Rap Media Rankings Crown Kai Cenat & DJ Akademiks"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Complex<\/a> always stirs the pot with their hip-hop media power rankings<\/a> every year, and for good reason. It’s an opportunity for folks to debate about rap culture’s main pushers, and in 2025, the publication thinks the top dogs are Kai Cenat, DJ Akademiks, and Joe Budden<\/a>.<\/p>\n

That’s the top three in descending order, and the list features many more notable names. DJ Vlad, Rory and Mal, N.O.R.E.<\/a>, Ebro, Jadakiss<\/a> and Fat Joe<\/a>, Elliott Wilson, Bootleg Kev, Big Boy, Arshan Jawad, and more appear further down.<\/p>\n

Kai Cenat’s popularity<\/a> makes it easy to understand why he’s at the top, but his crossovers with hip-hop artists and the flurry his opinions cause are far more important factors. Whether it’s simple album reactions, discussions, field trips, or collaborations, he’s been at the forefront for a while now.<\/p>\n

Every other name on this list deserves their flowers, too. Folks may recognize how the DJ Akademiks and Joe Budden-assisted top three this year is just a different order for 2024’s list. These folks stay on top, but it’s exciting to see the quality gaps get smaller between all these voices.<\/p>\n

Complex Hip-Hop Media Rankings<\/p>\n

However, there are still some other names that the culture also values and treasures that didn’t make it on this list. We will see just how much of an uproar this list causes with its debates and divisive discussions, as sought-after as they may be. After all, that’s the nature of a list like this.<\/p>\n

What would be very interesting, though, is if folks like Kai Cenat, Joe Budden, and DJ Akademiks start collaborating more regularly. That could address hip-hop’s generational divide right now, although it seems like everyone is comfortable with the lane they carved out for themselves.<\/p>\n

For now, though, these names haven’t addressed this ranking. We’ll see how they respond to their placements and what else fans have to say about them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Complex always stirs the pot with their hip-hop media power rankings every year, and for good reason. It’s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":35223,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[29004,88,29005,2769,25337,29006,216,3,4018],"class_list":["post-35222","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-complex","tag-entertainment","tag-hip-hop-culture","tag-hip-hop-news","tag-joe-budden","tag-kai-cenat","tag-music","tag-news","tag-rankings"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35222","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35222"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35222\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35223"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35222"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35222"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35222"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}