Influence is like DNA: imperceptible to the untrained eye, but unmistakably essential once you truly dig into what one is made of. The culture of today’s hip-hop may be vastly different if it weren’t for the contributions of three rap titans: Nicki Minaj, Gucci Mane, and Kendrick Lamar.
Nicki Minaj putting the men on notice to watch the queen conquer showed the Megan Thee Stallion’s, GloRilla’s, and Doja Cat’s how to succeed in a male-dominated arena. Gucci Mane epitomized ATL cool while being the career-defining cosign artists like Migos, Young Thug, and Future needed to jumpstart a new era of Southern hip-hop dominance. Kendrick Lamar redefined the commercial viability of lyricism while simultaneously shining a limelight on West Coast artists with more things to rap about than gangbanging and weed.
These are three of the most influential rappers of the last 15 years, and this is how each changed the game.
Nicki Minaj
Nicki Minaj attends the 2025 Met Gala Celebrating “Superfine: Tailoring Black Style” at Metropolitan Museum of Art on May 05, 2025 in New York City.
Photo by Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images for The Met Museum/Vogue.
Maximalism is the lifeblood of a hip-hop genre where bragging is tantamount to breathing. Only a few rappers have reached a level of cultural ubiquity over a long enough period that your promises become prophecies and ego becomes inspiration. On her “Did It On Em,” from her 2010 debut album Pink Friday, before she truly began carving her own lane with razor-sharp lyrics, Nicki Minaj famously proclaimed, “All these b*tches is my sons.” In hindsight, she was preparing us; the domineering femininity that made her bars sound like one Louboutin heel pressed on the pulse of the culture and another on a rapper’s neck birthed the current generation of beautiful bar bosses.
GloRilla is striving to achieve Nicki Minaj’s longevity, (at one point) Megan Thee Stallion said that she’s her GOAT, and Doja Cat saw a confidence in her that was alien to her younger self but would become the standard as an adult. Just between those three alone, they’ve notched nearly 30 Top 10 hits on the Billboard charts, and are some of the driving forces of arguably one of the most impactful renaissances ever for women who rap. Although her legacy has complications as she’s gone from idol to rival with some who were inspired by her work, in a copycat music industry where labels want to be as risk-averse as possible, Onika Tanya Maraj has proven for a decade-plus that women in rap are indeed a worthwhile investment.
Gucci Mane
Gucci Mane attends 4th Annual Luv Me Sum U Celebrating 2 Chainz’s Birthday on September 14, 2024 in Atlanta, Georgia.
Photo by Prince Williams/WireImage.
If Atlanta has owned a deed to the hip-hop landscape for the last two decades, Gucci Mane is the chief architect of the kingdom it’s reigned from. The man cool enough to make an ice cream face tattoo gangsta built a throne atop more than 75 mixtapes and 15 albums of Chicken Talk linguistics, low-toned braggadocio as sweet as “Lemonade,” and enough icy tutorials on paper chasing to give an entire generation the coordinates of the bag. After putting on the likes of OJ Da Juiceman and Waka Flocka Flame in the tail end of the aughts, he would discover Young Thug in 2013 and mentor a young trio known as the Migos before their Drake cosign. Then there’s Young Dolph, Peewee Longway, Metro Boomin, Zaytoven, Southside, Pooh Shiesty, and the countless other rappers and producers who have either worked with or received support from Gucci.
If one takes a look at the soundscape of the last decade of Southern rap, it’s not hard to see his blueprints.
It’s no surprise that he was Latto’s favorite rapper growing up, given how she embodies the rugged raunchiness of Guwop classics like “Freaky Gurl,” which she flipped for her “Muwop” collaboration with the ATL legend. His deluge of music in the face of legal issues is what made YoungBoy Never Broke Again “feel like Gucci Mane in 2006” on his 2020 hit “Make No Sense.” 21 Savage’s deadpan yet deadly delivery of the most villainous trap nightmares is quintessential Gucci, a rapper 21 has said he idolized so much that he hated Young Jeezy — Gucci’s erstwhile rival — because of it.
His return from prison in 2016, following a sentence for possession of a firearm by a convicted felon, was treated like a hip-hop holiday, and his ad-libs are part of how people communicate with one another. Gucci Mane is an undisputed forefather of trap rap.
Kendrick Lamar
Kendrick Lamar performs onstage during Apple Music Super Bowl LIX Halftime Show at Caesars Superdome on February 09, 2025 in New Orleans, Louisiana.
Photo by Jamie Squire/Getty Images.
For a decade-plus, Kendrick Lamar has disproven one of the truest statements in all of hip-hop: bars don’t sell. After Lil Wayne’s prime was prematurely stunted by an eight-month prison sentence in 2010, the new generation at the time wasn’t selling records with the type of deep lyricism exhibited by forefathers like Nas, Eminem, and Jay-Z. Then, K. Dot followed up his acclaimed project Section.80 with the paradigm-shifting major label debut album good kid, m.A.A.d. City, a sprawling and ambitious storytelling rap album that shot up to #2 on the Billboard 200 album charts. Since then, every album he’s put out has sustained the same level of barwork while also debuting atop the charts. No matter if he’s rapping about the ills of alcohol abuse while sounding like E.T. (“Swimming Pools”), delivering the definitive protest anthem (“Alright”), or knocking the crown off a king’s head onto his own (“Not Like Us”), he’s shown a generation of rappers that commercial success doesn’t have to come from compromised lyrical quality.
It would be hard to hear Doechii’s success with her supersonic flow and penchant for introspective lyricism and not hear Lamar’s influence on his former TDE labelmate. We honestly haven’t seen a run this long and dominant from a solo L.A. rapper since prime Snoop Dogg, a man who publicly passed him the West Coast torch. Kung Fu Kenny helped the world get acclimated to a more brutally honest depiction of L.A. beyond the image of a perpetual vacation with dispensaries, sunny weather, and beaches. This is what allowed for rappers like Vince Staples and his cousin Baby Keem to shine while telling their darkest tales.
He’s won a Pulitzer Prize, earned multiple Emmy nods for his Super Bowl LIX Apple Music halftime show, and helped a new generation of West Coast artists get their first Billboard placement by featuring on his GNX album in 2024. It’s safe to say Kendrick Lamar is the King of the West.
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