The Best Feature Artist in Rap

I wanted to calculate what artist in Rap has the biggest feature stimulus. I gathered a bunch of data and came to some pretty strong conclusions. I would massively recommend reading the Methodology because otherwise you’ll likely have trouble interpreting the data and what the categories mean

Methodology

I picked 4-year periods for artists. Doing whole career is really tough and I wanted to compare primes without having s***ty features early or late in career weighing artists down.

The artists and periods I chose were Drake from 2015-2018, Wayne from 2007-2010, Nicki from 2014-2017, Kanye from 2008-2011, Future from 2015-2018 and Travis from 2016-2019. I also originally chose Kendrick but I removed him because he doesn’t have enough features and his features were almost exclusively with artists who already are stars which f***ed up the results. Regardless if people want I can show data that he really shouldn’t even be in the conversation here.

I’m confident these time periods are when these artists did the most features for other artists and were most dominant and most importantly when the artist was helping the feature more often than not rather than vice versa.

I am ONLY looking at features here done for other artists. I’ve excluded producer tracks like Khaled and I’ve excluded any songs where it was ambiguous whether the artist in question was the main artist on the song (think that Game of Thrones song w Travis, SZA and The Weeknd).

I’m only looking at features that charted here. It’s too hard and unfair to look at every feature artists did - Wayne on tapes for example.

I looked at the Hot 100 and went through every feature the artists charted during their respective periods and recorded a bunch of data.

The categories you see below are as follows:

Number of Charting Features: The total number of features that the artist did that charted during that period

#1s: Qualifying features that went #1 on the Hot 100
Top 5, Top 10, Top 40s: all as above

Difficulty: This is calculated by looking at the main artist of the song and finding their highest charting song prior to the release of the feature. e.g. for Yes Indeed by Lil Baby, Lil Baby’s previous highest charting song was #71. This is averaged and artists who had not charted a song prior to the feature were given a 150 for this. The lower the difficulty, the bigger and more famous the main artists of songs were. Higher difficulty is more impressive here

Average Charting Time: the average number of weeks a feature by that artist charted fort

Total Charting Time: As above but not averaged

Net Album Sale Change: For features that appeared on an artists album I calculated the % change in first week sales between the album prior to the feature and the album with the feature. This is the total % change across all features

Average Album Sale Change: this is as above but averaged. A high value here indicates that generally the main artist on the song was more successful after/during the period the feature came out

Average Chart Rank: This is where the song ranks in the main artists discography chart wise at the time of chart peak. For example, Yes Indeed was Lil Baby’s highest charting song ever at the time so this is 1. Make Her Say was Cudi’s 2nd highest charting song so this is 2. This is the averaged rank across all the features. A higher value here indicates that features tended to be some of the main artists highest charting song

Average Change from Highest: This looks at the main artists previous highest charting song and finds the difference between the feature and that song. e.g. Yes Indeed charted at #6 and his previous highest was #71 so this is -65. Meanwhile Blessings by Big Sean charted at #28 while Seans highest at the time was #6 so this is 22. This is the averaged result - lower here indicates that features regularly constituted some of the highest charting songs for the main artist

Features for artists who have never charted: this indicates the number of features for artists who had never previously registered a song on the Hot 100

Highest Charting: this indicates the number of songs that were the main artists highest charting song

Highest Charting %: this is the percentage of the artists features that were at time of release the main artists highest charting song ever

#1, Top 5, Top 10, Top 40 %: this is the % of the artists features during that time that charted 1st, top 5, top 10 and top 40

Table/Data:

Results:

1. Drake
Drake seems to be the clear winner. Despite charting less features than Wayne he has more 1s, more top 5s and more top 10s. He has a similar difficulty level to Wayne often giving features to smaller artists. He has the highest average charting time - his features charted for an average of 19.5 weeks. He has by far the largest impact on artists future album sales. He has the second lowest average chart rank, the second lowest average change from highest, by far the most features that ended up artists highest charting songs despite doing only 1 feature for an artist who hadn’t already charted. He has the highest 1 percentage and the 2nd highest top 5, top 10 and top 40 percentage.

2. Wayne
Wayne is the clear second and he’s not that far behind Drake. He charted the most features of anyone and the most top 40s. He has the second highest difficulty and gave 4 artists their first Hot 100 hit. His songs charted for an impressive average of 18.1 weeks and he had the lowest average change from highest indicating that his features often were artists best charting songs. He has the highest top 40 percentage with almost 80% of his features during this time going top 40. He had a negative impact on album sales largely because he often worked with artists on the decline rather than younger newer artists.

3. Kanye
Kanye sits at a solid 3rd though somewhat further below Wayne & Drake. He charted only 13 features but had the highest percentage of top 5s and top 10s. He did have a lower difficulty often working with big artists but not as low as Nicki. He had a sizable impact on artists future album sales and had the lowest chart rank of any artist - meaning his features often ended up some of the main artists biggest hits.

4. Nicki
Nicki sits in 4th a little back from Kanye. It’s also worth mentioning that she has an outstanding record across the entire decade - picking a 4 year period for her was tough. She worked with established artists more than anyone but charted 19 features at a good hit rate of chart success.

5. Future
This is fairly subjective but I would place Future higher than Travis based on this data. Travis succeeded in having more top 5s, top 10s and top 40s but often failed to have continued success averaging just 2.7 weeks of charting. Future also had a vastly higher difficulty regularly working with artists who had never charted songs or had little prior chart success. He had a significant impact on future album sales.

6. Travis
Travis is narrowly behind future. He charted a strong number of songs and represented higher discography rankings for artists. He had a strong initial impact with many of his songs charting high on debut but struggled to produce hit songs with his features as many fell off the charts after the first week. Regardless he does clearly have an impact on a songs success.

Feel free to discuss any of this. Are there some obvious artists and 4-year periods I missed? Do you think Wayne or Drake anecdotally had the bigger period? Who do you see having the biggest impact feature wise in the coming decade?

Also if anyone wants the raw data I used I can set that up.

Drake

Never understood why barbz behave like they got an inferiority complex. Nicki always kills it and is very successful at what she does.

you should create your own blog, @op

Might end up posting some stuff as articles on KTT when that functionality comes

Fr
She has one of the most impressive career feature runs of anyone

these are so insightful

In

🐐🦉

well done op

btw we need the clap smiley

how long did this take you

Great work my guy @safe
Keep doing you

Good thread safe

good thread

He said hold on I’m gonna get to the bottom of this

Couple hours
Longest part was just scraping data

Would love there to be a proper chart dataset so I could use that but I’ve had no luck finding one

Wayne must be so proud Drake grew up to be a bright young man

Quoted wrong person see above

itaintsafe.cum

i think this definitely would've taken me longer than a couple of hours

good job though safe