Leading up to the Grammy nominations on Nov. 7, Rolling Stone is breaking down 10 different categories. For each, we’re predicting the nominees, as well as who will (and who should) win on Grammy night.
This year’s Best Rap Album race should come down to Kendrick or Clipse, even if the other three nominees are all worthy in their own right. Lamar and Clipse, however, are lyrical titans. And while you can’t go wrong, we think the Academy will favor the project from a Grammy darling, which also made more of a commercial splash.
Best Rap Album – Our Predictions
Clipse, Let God Sort Em Out
J.I.D, God Does Like Ugly
Kendrick Lamar, GNX
Playboi Carti, I Am Music
Tyler, The Creator, CHROMAKOPIA
Who Will Win?
Kendrick Lamar, GNX
How long does the aftermath of a tidal wave last? We’ll find out this year, as Kendrick Lamar’s work on GNX will likely be up for several awards, including Best Rap Album and Album of the Year. The album came as somewhat of a surprise after an already banner year for the Compton rhymer, vanquishing Drake with “Not Like Us,” a song that won a whopping five awards during the last Grammy ceremony. But GNX showed Kendrick delving deeper on who “us” is with what veteran journalist and Genius VP of Music and Content Rob Markman says is an “unapologetically west coast” sound on his latest project.
“Having to appeal to everybody is something that hip-hop has suffered from the past several years,” he says, lauding that Kendrick “was on his shit and if you liked it, great, and if you didn’t, he didn’t give a fuck. I think that is important.” As great as the album is, it dropped in October 2024, and it’s worth wondering if that momentum will carry into February 2026 — we think it will, and Markman ponders if we’ll get a new music video or new music as a subtle campaign gesture to the Grammy committee. Either way, he says GNX is his close runner-up in the Best Rap Album category, but he hopes for a hip-hop first: “I think Clipse are going to win. My hope is that they split, GNX gets that Album of the Year and hip-hop returns to Album of the Year stature.”
Who Should Win?
Clipse, Let God Sort Em Out
Clipse have been having a banner year before and after releasing their highly anticipated Let God Sort Em Out. After a 15-year absence, the Virginia duo delivered a masterclass buoyed by Pharrell production that embodied their classic sound for a new era. Markman says he thinks Clipse should and will win, citing the album’s heavy familial themes. Obviously, the Thornton brothers are reunited, but he feels the album has several other moments that defy the reductive “they only rap about coke” jab: the poignant, John Legend-assisted “Birds Don’t Sing,” about losing their parents, Pusha’s reflections on losing a child on “All Things Considered,” and their reflections on their grandmother’s history in the drug game. Markman says the sophisticated, well-written project is a testament to aging and growth in rap that deserves to be applauded. “They tell us hip-hop is a young man’s game. They trick us out of our position…I think it’s a dope story for hip-hop, and it lets others who are coming behind Clipse [know], ‘Oh, I can grow in this.’”
Forecasting the Field
Markman says, for him, the past 12 months in rap have been “the year of intention,” full of albums that “really had a story to share. They really had some pain that they wanted to give, some hope that they wanted to give.” That’s the case with Kendrick, Clipse, as well as JID’s God Does Like Ugly album. J.I.D has long been a respected lyricist who, for many fans, is poised to achieve a new level of stardom. An album like God Does Like Ugly will accelerate that ascendance.
Markman is also impressed with the growth Tyler, the Creator’s shown on CHROMAKOPIA, which once again reflects the best of his lush, layered production chops, as well as thematic growth. On “Hey Jane,” he explored the permutations of having a baby, while on “Momma” he juxtaposes his mother’s lessons with the lack of insight from his father. “Tyler gives a dope blueprint, especially with this album, to still be yourself, but to grow the fuck up,” Markman says. And while Playboi Carti isn’t regarded as the same caliber of lyricist as the others, his I Am Music project is too momentous to ignore. Carti doesn’t have much Grammy history as a soloist, with his only nominations being on Kanye’s “Carnival” and Weeknd’s “Timeless”, but that should change with I Am Music. The Grammys aren’t just an award body, they’re a document of history, and it makes sense that Carti’s maximalist effort, with moments like “Cocaine Nose,” “Like Weezy,” and “Good Credit” with Kendrick Lamar, will be nominated. It feels odd not to have a woman in the category, but as Markman says of this current Grammy selection period, “When we talk about the force that women have been in hip-hop and continue to be, it was tough to find something that rose to the occasion.”
Whoever wins or doesn’t win, Markman is adamant that trophies don’t define us. “While I think it’s fun and it’s a dope celebration, I want to be careful about how much stock we put into it because people get really bent out of shape about the Grammys. Phife Dawg said, ‘I never let a statue tell me how nice I am.’ I feel like we got to get back to not giving a fuck about what the mainstream thinks about us.”
