The time is here, ladies and gentlemen. After a great success last year, the KC.com team has come together to host our 2nd annual Hip-Hop March Madness tournament!

For those who may have missed the memo on what our Hip-Hop March Madness tournament is all about, let us explain. With the real March Madness NCAA Basketball tournament kicking off this week, the KC team wanted to get into the spirit once again this year with a much needed hip-hop twist. Instead of college basketball teams, our bracket contains hip-hop artists and the winners of each match up will be determined by you, the fans, in a simple voting process.

With Kendrick Lamar taking the crown for our inaugural tournament in 2014, the West Coast spitter returns with a number 1 seed this year after having a very successful end of 2014 and beginning of 2015. The other three number 1 seeds are Drake, Kanye West and Lil Wayne, who will have tough barriers to face if they want to make that Final 4. We have several newcomers to the tournament this year including G-Unit, Trey Songz, Azealia Banks, Vic Mensa, G-Eazy, Tink, Dej Loaf, Rae Sremmurd and more. Here’s how it all goes down:

Rules:

1. Review each bracket carefully.
2. Vote for 1 artist per match-up.
3. Repeat steps 1 and 2 until you’ve voted for all 4 regions.
4. Follow the votes over the next few days and watch the real March Madness because, well, it is March Madness.

With that being said, we are excited to announce that the voting for Round 1 of our 2nd annual Hip-Hop March Madness tournament has officially begun! Click the following pages to place your votes and check back in on March 19th to see which artists advanced to Round 2.