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The best rap song of 2023 depends on what you value, but Killer Mike’s SCIENTISTS & ENGINEERS is the strongest all-around choice: it won both rap awards at the 2024 Grammys and brings together layered writing, contrasting performances and ambitious production. The year’s full story is broader, though, stretching from Dave and Central Cee’s UK-dominating Sprinter to Noname’s Namesake, Sexyy Red’s SkeeYee and billy woods and Kenny Segal’s Year Zero.
Direct answer: The strongest overall choice is Killer Mike’s SCIENTISTS & ENGINEERS, featuring André 3000, Future and Eryn Allen Kane. It won both Best Rap Performance and Best Rap Song at the 2024 Grammys. But 2023 had no single song that settled the argument for everyone: Dave and Central Cee’s Sprinter was the year’s clearest UK rap phenomenon, Noname’s Namesake was among its sharpest political statements, and billy woods and Kenny Segal’s Year Zero represented the ambitious underground.
So this is an editorial shortlist rather than an objective ranking. It balances writing, production, replay value, cultural impact, awards recognition, chart performance and regional breadth. These are the 18 tracks that best explain what rap was doing in 2023.
Listening shortcut: If you want to hear the selections in sequence, use your preferred service to listen to the 2023 rap playlist. The 15-track starter set near the end is a practical place to begin.
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What made 2023 such an interesting rap year?
2023 was hip-hop’s 50th anniversary year, but it was also a year in which rap’s commercial dominance was openly debated. Pitchfork observed that the first half of the year did not produce a rap song or album at No. 1 on Billboard’s main chart, while arguing that some of the most rewarding work was happening away from the mainstream center. That tension matters: a list made only from chart leaders would miss much of the year’s best writing and production, while a list made only from critical favorites would understate how widely songs such as Sprinter, Players, Paint the Town Red and SkeeYee traveled.
The selection therefore triangulates four kinds of evidence: specialist criticism, especially Pitchfork and Complex; major awards and nominations from the Recording Academy; official chart and streaming indicators; and the geographical and stylistic variety of the music. Popularity is evidence of reach, not automatic proof of artistic superiority. A Grammy nomination is evidence of industry recognition, not universal consensus.
The 18 best rap songs of 2023
1. Killer Mike featuring André 3000, Future and Eryn Allen Kane — SCIENTISTS & ENGINEERS
Best overall; best awards-backed selection. This is the most convincing all-around pick because it succeeds on several levels at once. Killer Mike brings the song’s central perspective, Future supplies a contrasting presence, André 3000 turns in an unusually prominent appearance, and Eryn Allen Kane gives the record melodic lift. The performances do not blur together: each voice changes the song’s temperature and emphasis.
The track won both Best Rap Performance and Best Rap Song at the 2024 Grammys. Those awards recognized recordings released during the relevant 2023 eligibility period, not every song released between January and December 2023, but they still make this the year’s clearest awards-backed choice. More importantly, the song feels composed rather than merely assembled around famous guests. Its layered writing and changing vocal textures reward focused listening.
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Biggest UK rap record; strongest meeting of art and commercial impact. Sprinter is indispensable because it made UK rap’s scale impossible to ignore without losing the conversational chemistry that made the collaboration work. Dave and Central Cee trade sharply observed flexes and lifestyle details over a spare, instantly recognizable beat, giving the track both an international gloss and a distinctly British identity.
Official Charts named it the UK’s Official Song of Summer 2023. It spent 10 consecutive weeks at No. 1, a record for a UK rap track according to that coverage, and finished as the UK’s No. 2 biggest song of the year. Official Charts also reported a record-setting weekly streaming total for a UK rap single at release. Those are UK-specific claims, not proof that it was the biggest rap song in the world, but they establish Sprinter as 2023’s most important chart success in rap.
3. Baby Keem and Kendrick Lamar — The Hillbillies
Best high-energy collaboration. The Hillbillies is the accessible, immediately replayable side of the year’s rap. Baby Keem and Kendrick Lamar sound like they are competing and joking at the same time, moving through the beat with a loose, kinetic energy that keeps the song from feeling over-engineered. Its appeal is not dependent on a complicated concept: the momentum, vocal contrast and memorable refrain do the work.
Pitchfork included it in its year-end rap selections, and the Recording Academy nominated it for Best Rap Performance. It is a useful reminder that a song can be both critically visible and uncomplicatedly fun.
4. Drake — 8am in Charlotte
Best lyrical showcase from a major star. Drake’s timestamp-song format has become familiar, but 8am in Charlotte remains one of his better 2023 examples because the structure gives him room to prioritize bars over a conventional pop chorus. The production leans toward boom-bap, leaving space for punchlines, references and the kind of status-accounting that has defined this series of records.
Pitchfork singled out the track’s timestamp structure, writing and beat. It belongs here not because a famous artist automatically deserves a place, but because this is a focused performance from a major rapper operating in a form he knows how to use.
5. Noname — Namesake
Best political and self-questioning rap song. Namesake is pointed without pretending that political clarity is easy to maintain. Noname addresses complicity, capitalism, war and the uncomfortable relationship between artistic principles and commercial participation. The song’s force comes partly from that tension: it does not position the speaker safely outside the systems being criticized.
Rank #2
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Pitchfork treated it as one of the year’s most incisive rap songs. It is less interested in a slogan than in the moral complications surrounding activism, money and public identity. That makes it a particularly valuable counterweight to the year’s more celebratory records.
6. billy woods and Kenny Segal featuring Danny Brown — Year Zero
Best underground and experimental selection. Year Zero is bleak, funny and dystopian, with Kenny Segal’s production doing as much narrative work as the rappers. billy woods and Danny Brown approach the track from different angles, but both contribute to its sense of social and psychological dislocation.
This is exactly the kind of record a chart-only list would lose. Its appeal is not built around a clean, immediate hook; it is built around dense images, uneasy atmosphere and the pleasure of hearing highly individual rappers navigate a producer’s difficult world. It demonstrates why the best rap of 2023 cannot be reduced to the biggest singles.
7. MIKE, Wiki and The Alchemist — Mayors a Cop
Best socially observant underground track. Mayors a Cop places urban conditions at the center: policing, rent, infrastructure and the daily experience of living inside systems that are usually discussed in abstractions. MIKE and Wiki bring distinct New York perspectives, while The Alchemist gives them a grim, textural setting rather than a glossy backdrop.
Pitchfork’s commentary made it a strong example of rap as local observation. Its subject matter is political, but its impact comes from the way large problems are connected to ordinary environments and lived experience.
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8. Earl Sweatshirt — Making the Band (Danity Kane)
Best kinetic short-form performance. Earl Sweatshirt is often associated with murky, inward production, but this track has an unusually alert and kinetic quality. The compact arrangement gives his performance forward motion, and the result feels less like a foggy monologue than a rapper testing how much density he can fit into a concise space.
It is a small but important choice: best-of lists should recognize not only grand statements, but also the moments when an established artist subtly changes the expected shape of their work.
9. That Mexican OT featuring Paul Wall and DRODi — Johnny Dang
Best regional breakout. Johnny Dang is rooted in Texas rap and makes that regional lineage part of its appeal rather than treating it as background decoration. That Mexican OT brings exuberance and crossover charisma, while Paul Wall and DRODi connect the track to Houston’s established sound and culture.
Pitchfork’s broader 2023 songs coverage highlighted its energy and Texas identity. It belongs on a national list because regional specificity is one of the reasons rap stays inventive: the song sounds like it comes from somewhere, not from a generic market category.
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Best example of New York’s producer-rapper movement. Nice N Slow represents the raunchier, more melodic side of New York’s so-called sexy-drill movement. Cash Cobain combines explicit writing with a more adventurous, synth-heavy arrangement, showing how the scene was expanding beyond a single drum pattern or vocal template.
Complex’s year-end discussion of New York’s evolving sound and Pitchfork’s selections both make this kind of track important. It is less about a traditional lyrical showcase than about a producer’s ability to create a specific mood that other rappers can inhabit.
Rank #3
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- DIY Decoration: Since everyone's decoration style and purpose are different, our vinyl fake records do not provide center graphic stickers, you can feel free to DIY graffiti on it to design your favorite words or patterns like hip hop, rock and discos for decoration.
- Easy to Use: Just fix the double-sided tape (Double-sided tape does NOT include) with the record and the wall, and you can also hang blank vinyl records with string for decoration.
- Great Gift: The vinyl CDs can be designed with their own unique style. It is an excellent gift for friends, lovers, and families, who like hip-hop, rock and retro, and can make them feel the unique rock and retro atmosphere.
- Versatile Application: These fake vinyl albums can be stuck or hung in bedroom, corridor, bar, music room, cafe, etc as decorations. At the same time, it is also very suitable for discos, hip-hop, rock, 70s, 80s, etc. music theme parties, creating a strong theme atmosphere.
11. Ice Spice — Deli
Best concise New York rap record. Deli is economical and sharply identifiable. Ice Spice’s clipped delivery sits comfortably over minimalist, drill-adjacent production, and the song’s brevity becomes part of its strength: it establishes a mood, delivers its personality and exits before the idea is diluted.
Pitchfork included it in its 2023 rap playlist. The track also helps represent the year’s women-led rap conversation without treating every successful woman rapper as part of one interchangeable trend.
12. Lil Uzi Vert — Just Wanna Rock
Best rap and Jersey-club crossover. Just Wanna Rock is a borderline calendar-year inclusion because it arrived in late 2022, but its cultural reach and continued prominence in 2023 make it relevant to a year-in-review list. Lil Uzi Vert helped push Jersey-club energy into a much larger rap conversation, turning a regional rhythmic language into a short, physical, highly repeatable crossover record.
The Recording Academy described it as a prominent rap/Jersey-club crossover and nominated it for Best Rap Song. Its significance is as much about movement and regional sound as about conventional lyricism.
13. Sexyy Red — SkeeYee
Best disruptive summer anthem. SkeeYee distilled Sexyy Red’s blunt, quotable and deliberately unvarnished style into a record that was impossible to mistake for anyone else’s. It is direct club rap, but its impact came from personality as much as from the beat or hook.
Pitchfork described it as a summer anthem, while Spotify’s year-end editorial coverage identified Sexyy Red as one of hip-hop’s breakout figures in 2023. The track is an essential cultural-impact selection even for listeners who weigh writing and atmosphere more heavily than viral reach.
14. Coi Leray — Players
Best polished mainstream rap hit. Players uses a recognizable sample as the foundation for a clean, danceable hook and a compact pop-rap arrangement. Coi Leray’s delivery keeps the song light on its feet rather than turning it into a museum piece built around the sample.
The Recording Academy nominated it for Best Rap Performance. Its place here is not based solely on visibility: the record demonstrates how a familiar musical idea can be reshaped into an efficient contemporary hit.
15. Doja Cat — Paint the Town Red
Best theatrical crossover record. Paint the Town Red brought dark, theatrical presentation and a prominent sample-driven hook into the center of the mainstream rap conversation. Doja Cat’s performance balances menace, spectacle and pop accessibility, making the song easy to identify even when heard outside a rap-focused setting.
Official Charts documented its UK impact. The Recording Academy’s relevant nomination was for Doja Cat’s Attention in Best Rap Song, not for Paint the Town Red; keeping those facts separate matters. This is a mainstream-impact pick, not a claim that it represented the year’s critical consensus.
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Best direct club record. Face Down shows the City Girls continuing to command provocative hooks and Southern bounce-oriented rap. It is explicit, physical and unconcerned with softening its point of view for wider approval.
Its value in this list is partly historical and partly formal: while 2023 produced many new breakout voices, established acts still understood how to make a club record that depends on attitude, repetition and a forceful rhythmic pocket.
17. Flo Milli — Fruit Loop
Best bright, personality-first selection. Fruit Loop brings playfulness and color to a list that otherwise includes substantial amounts of darkness, political anxiety and flex-heavy rap. Flo Milli’s personality is the organizing principle; the song is lively because the performance refuses to become anonymous inside its beat.
Pitchfork included it in its 2023 rap playlist. It also broadens the women-led section beyond the biggest crossover names, showing that the year’s female rap conversation was stylistically varied rather than represented by one sound.
18. Navy Blue — Pillars
Best reflective and spiritually grounded track. Pillars supplies emotional range. Navy Blue addresses family, grief, ancestry and acceptance with a reflective tone that feels considered rather than ornamental. It is a song about continuity and inner life, not just a change of pace from harder records.
That emotional breadth is why it belongs in the final 18. A year of rap should contain room for party records and technical performances, but also for songs that treat memory and healing as serious subjects.
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Recognition and quality are related, but not identical
SCIENTISTS & ENGINEERS won Best Rap Performance and Best Rap Song at the 2024 Grammys. The Best Rap Performance field also included nominations for The Hillbillies, Drake and 21 Savage’s Rich Flex, Players and Just Wanna Rock. These nominations help identify records that were visible to the recording industry, but they do not establish a universally correct top five.
The eligibility-window detail is important. The 2024 ceremony honored recordings eligible under the Recording Academy’s rules for that ceremony, so its nominees should not be treated as a complete list of every important song released during the calendar year.
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Sprinter is the clearest commercial case
Among the songs here, Sprinter has the strongest concentrated official-chart evidence: 10 straight weeks at No. 1 in the UK, Official Song of Summer status, a reported record weekly streaming total for a UK rap single at release, and a No. 2 finish among the UK’s biggest songs of 2023. Those facts justify calling it one of the year’s biggest rap records, especially in Britain. They do not by themselves answer whether it is artistically better than Namesake or Year Zero.
Rap remained central to listening
Spotify’s U.S. 2023 year-end data still placed rap and rap-adjacent artists prominently among the country’s most-streamed performers, including Drake and 21 Savage. Spotify’s editorial coverage also emphasized women’s hip-hop, highlighting artists such as Nicki Minaj, Doja Cat, Latto, Ice Spice, Kaliii, Doechii and Sexyy Red. That supports a broader reading of the year: even amid discussion of weaker chart dominance, rap remained central to American listening and culture.
Geography matters
A U.S.-only list would misrepresent 2023. Sprinter is a defining UK rap record. Johnny Dang carries Texas lineage into a crossover setting. Nice N Slow and Deli reflect different directions in New York rap, from synth-heavy sexy drill to minimalist drill-adjacent production. Just Wanna Rock helped make Jersey-club rhythm part of a much larger rap conversation.
Pitchfork’s wider selections also point toward scenes in Philadelphia, Chicago, Milwaukee, the DMV, Memphis, Detroit and elsewhere. Regional breadth is not a diversity checkbox; it is a way to hear how local rhythms, slang, production habits and social conditions continue to shape the genre.
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A 15-song starting playlist
If you want a manageable introduction rather than all 18 tracks at once, start with these 15. This is an order for variety and discovery, not a ranking:
- Killer Mike featuring André 3000, Future and Eryn Allen Kane — SCIENTISTS & ENGINEERS
- Dave and Central Cee — Sprinter
- Baby Keem and Kendrick Lamar — The Hillbillies
- Noname — Namesake
- billy woods and Kenny Segal featuring Danny Brown — Year Zero
- Drake — 8am in Charlotte
- Sexyy Red — SkeeYee
- Coi Leray — Players
- Doja Cat — Paint the Town Red
- Ice Spice — Deli
- That Mexican OT featuring Paul Wall and DRODi — Johnny Dang
- Lil Uzi Vert — Just Wanna Rock
- MIKE, Wiki and The Alchemist — Mayors a Cop
- Cash Cobain — Nice N Slow
- Navy Blue — Pillars
Then add Earl Sweatshirt’s Making the Band (Danity Kane), City Girls’ Face Down and Flo Milli’s Fruit Loop for three different kinds of personality-driven rap.
Keep exploring: After the starter set, add the remaining selections to the full listening playlist and compare the year’s underground, regional and mainstream lanes side by side.
Worth adding if you want a deeper cut
Depending on whether you want more underground, regional or experimental material, Pitchfork’s broader 2023 selections also point to BigXthaPlug’s Rush Hour, Bktherula’s NO ADLIB, Niontay’s Thank Allah, Ot7Quanny and Leaf Ward’s Power, RealYungPhil and Gud’s Winners Circle, RXK Nephew’s Yeezy Boots, Sideshow’s Shell in a Ghost and Skech185 and Jeff Markey’s Up to Speed. Pillars is already in the main list. The Apple Music playlist associated with Pitchfork’s selections is a useful release-and-artist cross-check for these titles.
The verdict
2023’s best rap songs were defined by coexistence rather than one dominant formula. Major stars still made durable records, UK rap achieved unprecedented chart visibility, women-led rap remained culturally prominent, and some of the year’s most ambitious writing and production came from artists outside the commercial center.
If one song must lead the list, choose SCIENTISTS & ENGINEERS. If you want the biggest chart story, choose Sprinter. If you want to understand the year, listen across the categories: Namesake, Year Zero, SkeeYee, Johnny Dang, Deli and Pillars make the case that 2023’s rap story was much larger than a single ranking.
Source note: The selection draws on Pitchfork’s December 11, 2023 rap selections and broader year-end songs coverage, Complex’s year-end rap coverage, Recording Academy awards information, Official Charts reporting, and Spotify’s U.S. year-end and hip-hop editorial coverage. No song lyrics are reproduced.
Frequently Asked Questions
What was the best rap song of 2023?
There is no objective No. 1 because “best” depends on the criteria. Killer Mike’s “SCIENTISTS & ENGINEERS” is the strongest all-around, awards-backed choice, while “Sprinter” is the clearest commercial and UK-specific standout.
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“SCIENTISTS & ENGINEERS” won both Best Rap Performance and Best Rap Song at the 2024 Grammys. The ceremony’s eligibility rules covered a defined recording period, so the winners do not represent every song released during the 2023 calendar year.
Was “Sprinter” the biggest rap song of 2023?
It was one of the biggest rap songs in the UK, not necessarily the biggest rap song worldwide. Official Charts reported 10 consecutive weeks at No. 1, Official Song of Summer status and a No. 2 finish among the UK’s biggest songs of 2023.
Why is “Just Wanna Rock” on a list of 2023 rap songs?
“Just Wanna Rock” is included as a borderline year-in-review selection because it was released in late 2022 but had major cultural reach and continued prominence in 2023. It also represented the expansion of Jersey-club rhythm into mainstream rap.
What is the best way to listen to these songs?
Start with the 15-track sequence in the article, then add Earl Sweatshirt’s “Making the Band (Danity Kane),” City Girls’ “Face Down” and Flo Milli’s “Fruit Loop.” This gives you mainstream, UK, regional, underground, political and women-led rap in one sitting.
The Bottom Line
Bottom line: Killer Mike’s SCIENTISTS & ENGINEERS is the best single all-around choice, but 2023 is best understood through several lanes: Sprinter for UK chart impact, Namesake for political writing, Year Zero for underground experimentation, and SkeeYee for cultural force.
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