Nothing is more irksome to hear than lamentations of how the golden age of hip hop has passed. Rap today, thanks to the internet, is an open game: many of the characters on this list wouldn’t have been able to exist ten years ago. Labels are bypassed and anyone with an internet connection can be their own talent scout. We no longer wait for record labels and music executives to bring music to us: we actively go out and find it ourselves. iLoveMakonnen is the poster-boy for the new animal that is hip hop: last year he seemingly overnight went from being some guy with a few tracks on SoundCloud to touring with Drake and playing stadiums. Every day we’re beset by a barrage of new music, and this causes artists to have to strive to make themselves that bit different to everything else, allowing a huge amount of diversity to manifest itself. In no other genre is this more true than rap. Online, rap has a strong mixtape culture. Artists like Gucci Mane can have over 15 full-length releases in just one year. This allows a huge amount of room for experimentation, and the chance to hone a sound. The rappers on this list all shone in 2014. This year, expect them to explode.

 

BONES

 BONES and his TeamSESH crew pick up where Yung Lean leaves us off — essentially, he peddles what feels like a more sincere version of the latter’s signature #sadboy sound. He dropped his SoThereWeStood EP earlier this month, and — building on from earlier releases DeadBoy, Garbage and Rotten — is showing himself to be one of the most interesting rappers around. There’s a strong emo influence shining through a lot of his work, and seemingly a genre we can tentatively call ”emo-rap” looks set to be the nu metal of our decade, with rappers like Bones at the forefront of what is at this point in time an emergent and discernible genre.

 

 

Boogie

 Boogie’s name may be familiar to some of you already: he featured on SBTRKT’s Spaced Out, a cut on the deluxe edition of Wonder Where We Land that merely hinted at what a talented artist Boogie is in his own right. Despite the fact that he has only been rapping for just over a year, his single Bitter Raps was one of 2014’s best hip hop releases: with a refreshing honesty and unwavering awareness, Boogie laid siege to the tropes and machismo that pervade throughout hip hop today. If you’re pining for that new Kendrick Lamar album then Boogie might be able to tide you over for the time being.

 

 

Chaz French

 Chaz French is only 22, and yet already he has faced beleaguerment from homelessness, struggles with alcoholism, and suicidal thoughts. These experiences inform the passion and viscerality that runs through his standout EP of last year, Happy Belated. Tracks like Came Down and Erryday Stuntin’ go off like proper bangers, but at all times are imbued with a maturity that even hip hop veterans would struggle to match.

 

 

Daye Jack

 Daye Jack was born in Nigeria, he grew up in the current Mecca of hip hop that is Atlanta and is currently a student at New York University. His music is unassumingly complex, and tracks like Don F’ed Up manage to combine elements drawn from genres stretching from electronica to reggae, with Daye Jack constantly demonstrating his ability to rap in a variety of different styles.

 

 

Father

 Father is the head of Awful Records, an Atlanta based label and clique who look set to become the Odd Future of 2015. His work ethic is fantastic, and he produces, engineers, and designs not only for himself but also for the other members of the collective. His sound has just enough “weird” in it for it to be interesting, while not being too far gone that it couldn’t have a more mainstream appeal. iLoveMakonnen was Atlanta’s big breakout of 2014 and this year Father looks set to follow him to similar levels of acclaim.

 

 

Kevin Abstract

 Texan rapper Kevin Abstract impressed this year with his debut mixtape, MTV1987, particularly so when one considers that he was only 17 during the writing and recording of the record. Kid Cudi and Frank Ocean are the obvious points of comparison; Abstract flits easily between a wonderfully experimental style and something warmer and more relatable, at all times displaying a keen ear for melody. Abstract is very much a rapper for our age, and thematically MTV1987 was largely a discourse on the position that the internet now plays in our lives, and the negative effects that it has.

 

 

Kid Art

 Kid Art is a bit of a Kanye West in the making: besides rapping, he also produces most of the beats on which he raps, as well as directing his own videos. Kid Art  comes from a background in visual art and seems to draw influence from a much wider palette than his contemporaries on this list; his debut mixtape, $pielberg, was named thus after the director, and Andy Warhol gets a shoutout on that tape as the “late and great”. Kid Art has a confidence and a vision that looks set to propel him to greater popularity, something backed up by the fact that Epic recently signed him and his Cheers Club clique to release an album.

 

 

Michael Christmas

 Expect the holiday period to drag on a little longer than usual this year: Michael Christmas is on the scene. Christmas is one of the funniest rappers on this list — he’s quite aware that his image isn’t the coolest or most typical and it seemingly doesn’t bother him in the slightest. His tape of last year, Is This Art?, was a wonderfully self-deprecating trip through his everyday life in his hometown of Boston. At the moment he’s pretty difficult to Google (I’m not good with computers, is there some way I can get Google to exclude results including “Bublé” when I search the words “Michael” and “Christmas”?) but that looks set to soon change.

 

 

Rome Fortune

 Rome Fortune is currently the most exciting thing coming out of Atlanta. He’s hugely prolific, and isn’t afraid to work with unexpected producers: Four Tet and Jacques Greene have both been collaborators. Despite beginning this year with a spell in jail, expect to see a lot more of his distinctive blue beard as he continues to explode.

 

 

ZelooperZ

 For all that Detroit itself is crumbling, its scene just seems to get stronger. Credit has to be given to Danny Brown, who — while being one of the biggest names in hip hop today — has always stood by his hometown. The fruits of his labours are borne in Zelooperz, a member of Brown’s Detroit-based label Bruiser Brigade. Zelooperz is definitely reminiscent of his mentor, sharing the same penchant for the absurd and the asinine in raps that seem to go at a million miles per hour.