Kendrick Lamar coming in at the nine slot probably has raised a few eyebrows but the young Compton emcee has accomplished so much in a very short span of time. His independently released debut album, Section.80 dropped with the help of Top Dawg Entertainment in July 2011 and he hasn't looked back since. Kendrick Lamar also known as K.Dot teamed up with Dr. Dre and his Aftermath record label for the release of his second album, good kid, m.A.A.d city which launched him into superstardom.
Since then, he's won a total of eleven Grammys and is not only the first hip-hop artist to win a Pulitzer Prize for his album, DAMN but the first ever pop artist to win the iconic recognition award. There's really no telling what he has next on his list of accomplishments but there's no denying that he can out rap majority of today's hip-hop artists with ease.