HIFFI HIP-HOP 500

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Method / How it works

Built on signal.
Not opinion.

The Hiffi Hip-Hop 500 ranks artists by current YouTube popularity and momentum — scale, velocity, and growth — not artistic greatness. Rank is never for sale.

Enter live ranking → Claim your profile ↗

01 / Pipeline

From channel
to chart.

  1. 01

    Inventory + YouTube

    Artists in the Hiffi inventory with a YouTube channel are scored by the ranking worker. Channels without metrics stay off the chart until a successful refresh.

  2. 02

    Global Top 500

    The live leaderboard is the global YouTube composite ranking — up to 500 artists ordered by score. Filter chips load cities with enough ranked artists, then open that city’s local top 50.

  3. 03

    City charts

    City banners use exact location strings (for example Atlanta, GA). City ranks are local 1–50 by composite score — not a substring cut of the global list.

  4. 04

    Claim & verify

    Artists can claim their Artist Index profile to verify links, upload videos, and get discovered — separate from the ranking score itself.

Modes / Preview

Risers, breakout,
and underground heat.

Overall is the full live chart. Biggest Risers uses weekly rank snapshots to surface the largest climbs. Underground Heat is a dedicated mid/small-reach board sorted by engagement plus momentum. Breakout 100 is reach-below-P70 artists sorted by momentum.

02 / Score weights

What drives
the composite.

Every input is normalized across the tracked set so the chart balances established scale with current movement.

0135%

Recent momentum

Growth across momentum windows (7d / 30d / 90d) on views and subscribers

0230%

View velocity

Views earned relative to audience size

0320%

Audience reach

Verified channel subscriber footprint

0415%

Consistency

Sustained publishing and performance

03 / What you see

Metrics on
the board.

The live table and drawer expose YouTube inventory fields. Momentum windows appear when the ranking worker has enough snapshot history; otherwise they read as flat or unavailable.

7d

Momentum

Short-window growth vs recent snapshots — useful for breakout spikes.

30d

Momentum

Monthly growth signal — the core “recent momentum” weight in the composite.

90d

Momentum

Quarterly trend — separates sustained climbs from one-week noise.

Score

Composite

YouTube composite score used for global rank and city local rank.

Reach

Subs & views

Subscriber count, lifetime views, recent average views, and upload velocity.

Move

Rank delta

Week-over-week place changes when prior-rank snapshots are available.

04 / Cadence

Weekly
public index.

The public board refreshes on a weekly cadence with live YouTube metrics underneath. Internal refreshes catch anomalies; paid products stay firewalled from the score.

See who’s moving ↗

05 / Eligibility

Hip-hop
on YouTube.

Only inventory artists with a successful YouTube rank are eligible. City assignment uses the exact location on the profile. Independent index — not affiliated with YouTube.

Also see Hiffi 500 methodology ↗

Note / v1

YouTube-first
for now.

Today’s Hip-Hop 500 is scored from YouTube public data. Multi-source Hiffi Popularity Score pillars (engagement beyond YouTube, cultural impact, trust multipliers) are the longer-term methodology target — the same roadmap described on the Hiffi 500 methodology page.

On the list?

Claim your Hiffi Artist Profile to verify links, upload videos, and get discovered.
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