The nominations are in! Voting will begin MONDAY, January 26, 2026.

As the reader, you helped nominate the artists in each category. Our task was to ensure each nominee was eligible and placed in the correct category based on their own streaming service designations. For example, if an artist was nominated for ‘Alternative’ but is officially listed as ‘Pop,’ we honored the nomination but moved them to the appropriate category.

Take time to listen to each artist before voting opens.

Eligibility requirements are listed below. Without further ado, here are the nominations for The 2025 Born & Bred Best of RAP:

Duck City Music listen HERE

Logical304 listen HERE

Monstalung listen HERE

Shelem listen HERE

Stereophonic listen HERE

Travis Echols listen HERE

Zeadrea Jones listen HERE

ELIGIBILITY REQUIREMENTS

This part is very important. To be eligible to be nominated, an artist must have released ORIGINAL music between December 1, 2024 and November 30, 2025. Music that came out in December 2025 will be eligible for the 2026 awards. The other requirement is that the artist must be either from West Virginia or live here now and base their career out of the state. So if an artist was born in Grafton, but now calls Nashville their home and released music in June of 2025 , they meet the eligibility requirements. If an artists was born in Wisconsin, but now calls West Virginia home and released original music in September 2025, they are eligible.