#NewMusicTuesday: Best New Hip Hop Artist Nominees for iHeartRadio Music Awards Revealed!
The nominees for the 2017 iHeartRadio Music Awards are here, including the best new names in Hip-Hop over the past year - and we want to help you celebrate their success!
New Orleans-native Kevin Gates is the first on our list— his January 2016 debut album, Islah, peaked at No. 2 on the Billboard 200 chart, and featured a total of five singles including “Kno One,” “La Familia,” “The Truth,” “Really Really,” and “Two Phones,” which received the greatest amount of critical and commercial acclaim. Rapper Kent Jones is also a nominee— his hit single “Don’t Mind” is highlighted with lyrics in French, Spanish, Japanese, and Haitian Creole, and debuted on the Billboard Hot 100 in May 2016.
Nominee D.R.A.M. is best-known for his irreverent— and chart-topping— tune “Broccoli,” which peaked at No. 6 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 chart. D.R.A.M. made a guest appearance on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon last fall, and his debut album Big Baby D.R.A.M. was released to rave reviews. The critically-acclaimed mixtape Coloring Book from Chance the Rapper received three Grammy nominations, including Best Rap Album, and is also the first streaming-only album to ever receive a Grammy nomination. Chance also co-wrote and appeared on Kanye West’s massive 2016 LP, The Life of Pablo.
It has been a remarkable year for 19-year old Brooklyn hip hop phenom, Desiigner: his sensational rap single “Panda” exploded on YouTube and SoundCloud in late-2015, before being re-released in February 2016. Desiigner made a further splash in 2016 by signing to Kanye West’s music imprint, GOOD Music. Now, Desiigner’s capping off an incredible year and kicking off 2017 with three iHeartRadio Music Award nominations; in addition to the nod for ‘Best New Hip-Hop Artist,’ Desiigner is also up for ‘Hip-Hop Artist of the Year,’ and ‘Hip Hop Song of the Year’ for “Panda.”
Judging by the complete list of iHeartRadio Music Awards nominees, we can tell that 2016 was an amazing year for music! Be sure to grab your tickets to the 2017 iHeartRadio Music Awards now, or tune into TBS, TNT, and truTV at 8pm ET/5pm PT on Sunday, March 5 to catch all of the action live. The star-studded evening will also be simulcast on iHeartMedia stations nationwide, as well as on iHeartRadio. We can’t wait to celebrate the year in music with you!
