Who Won Hip-Hop to Hollywood? We Ranked 26 Artists Live

There are plenty of rappers who became actors.

That was never really the question.

What we wanted to know on Brand New Thoughts was who made the strongest transition from hip-hop into film and television once simply being famous on screen stopped being enough.

That distinction matters. Will Smith becoming one of the biggest movie stars in the world is obviously a major Hollywood transition. But what happens when you compare that with Ice Cube writing and producing films, Queen Latifah building through Flavor Unit, 50 Cent developing a television footprint around Power, or Donald Glover creating television himself?

So we established one basic rule: acting alone wouldn't carry the ranking.

An artist first had to come from hip-hop and make a legitimate move into film or television. Then, for the projects we counted, they needed some form of creative or business involvement beyond simply appearing on screen. That could mean creating or co-creating a project, executive producing it, owning the production company behind it, or holding some level of copyright, trademark, franchise or IP ownership.

The closer somebody was to actually creating or controlling the asset, the more weight we gave it.

That gave us 26 names, stretching from obvious heavyweights like Queen Latifah, Ice Cube, Will Smith and 50 Cent to artists whose Hollywood work is easier to overlook, including Vince Staples, Boosie, Method Man and Lil Yachty.

Once we had the field, sixteen names had to go.

Some cuts were relatively easy, because an artist's screen career was impressive but their ownership or creative involvement was thinner than the people around them. Others were much harder.

By the end of the first round, only ten remained: Queen Latifah, Ice Cube, Will Smith, 50 Cent, Donald Glover, Master P, Jay-Z, Nick Cannon, Diddy and Pharrell.

That was where the ranking stopped being a conversation about who had successfully crossed into Hollywood and became a conversation about what kind of power in Hollywood we valued most.

Some had created television. Some owned production companies. Some had built recognizable franchises. Some had been doing it for decades.

Then Diddy and Pharrell were removed before the poll, leaving eight finalists for the live audience.

At that point, we stopped making the decision ourselves. The audience ranked the remaining eight.

Ice Cube's case was unusually complete.

His Hollywood career includes acting, but acting is almost the least interesting part of it for this exercise. Cube became a writer, producer and production-company owner, and his work helped create properties that continued far beyond a single starring role.

Will Smith's transition may be larger in pure movie-star terms. Queen Latifah's may be one of the broadest and most sustained, moving across music, film, television and production while building infrastructure behind the scenes. But once the audience weighed creative control, production infrastructure, longevity and cultural impact together, Cube came out on top.

This ranking wasn't meant to settle the question permanently.

There are arguments for moving people up, arguments for changing the rubric, and probably several artists who never should have been eliminated when they were.

The more interesting question may be what the ranking exposes about the difference between visibility and control.

Hip-hop has produced plenty of people Hollywood was willing to put in front of a camera. Far fewer managed to build, create or own part of what was behind it.

So who should have been #1?

And who did we eliminate way too early?