James Todd Smith (born January 14, 1968), better known as LL Cool J (short for Ladies Love Cool James),^[1] is an American rapper and actor from Queens, New York. He is known for such hip hop hits as "I Can't Live Without My Radio", "I'm Bad", "The Boomin' System", "Rock The Bells" and "Mama Said Knock You Out", as well as romantic ballads such as "Doin' It", "I Need Love", "Around the Way Girl" and "Hey Lover". LL Cool J is also known as one of the forefathers of pop rap. He has released 13 studio albums and two greatest hits compilations. His twelfth album Exit 13 (2008), was his last for his long-tenured deal with Def Jam Recordings. His latest album, Authentic, was released in April 2013.

LL Cool J has also appeared in numerous films, including In Too Deep, Any Given Sunday, S.W.A.T., Mindhunters, and Edison. He currently stars in an action role as NCIS Special Agent Sam Hanna, on the CBS crime drama television series NCIS: Los Angeles. LL Cool J is also the host of Lip Sync Battle on Spike.^[2] He is also well known as a serious bodybuilder.^{[3][4][5][6][7][8]}

Kendrick Lamar Duckworth (born June 17, 1987), known as Kendrick Lamar, is an American rapper from Compton, California. Lamar embarked on his musical career as a teenager under the moniker K-Dot, releasing a mixtape that garnered local attention and led to his signing with Carson-based indie record label Top Dawg Entertainment (TDE). Lamar began to gain major recognition in 2010, after his first retail release, Overly Dedicated. The following year, he released the independent album Section.80, which included Lamar's debut single, "HiiiPoWeR". By that time, he had collaborated with several prominent artists in the hip hop industry, including The Game, Snoop Dogg, Busta Rhymes and Lil Wayne.

Lamar secured a major-label record deal with Aftermath and Interscope Records, in 2012. His major-label debut, good kid, m.A.A.d city, was released in October 2012 to critical success. The record contained the Top 40 singles "Swimming Pools (Drank)", "Bitch, Don't Kill My Vibe", and "Poetic Justice". It debuted at number two on the U.S. Billboard 200 chart and was later certified platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). Preceded by the Grammy Award-winning single "i", Lamar released his third studio album To Pimp a Butterfly, in 2015 to universal acclaim. The album drew on free jazz, funk, soul, and spoken word, and debuted atop the charts in the U.S. and the UK. In 2016, Lamar released untitled unmastered., a collection of unreleased demos that originated during the recording sessions for Butterfly.

Lamar has received wide acclaim and a number of accolades over the course of his career, including seven Grammy Awards. In early 2013, MTV named Lamar the number one "Hottest MC in the Game", on their annual list.^[1] Time named him one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2016.^[2] Aside from his solo career, Lamar is also known as a member of the West Coast hip hop supergroup Black Hippy, alongside his TDE label-mates and fellow South Los Angeles-based rappers Ab-Soul, Jay Rock and Schoolboy Q.^[3]

Taylor Alison Swift (born December 13, 1989) is an American singer-songwriter. Raised in Wyomissing, Pennsylvania, she moved to Nashville, Tennessee, at the age of 14 to pursue a career in country music. She signed with the independent label Big Machine Records and became the youngest songwriter ever signed by the Sony/ATV Music publishing house. The release of Swift's eponymous debut album in 2006 marked the start of her career as a country music singer. Her third single, "Our Song", made her the youngest person to single-handedly write and perform a number-one song on the Hot Country Songs chart.

Swift's second album, Fearless, was released in 2008. Buoyed by the pop crossover success of the singles "Love Story" and "You Belong with Me", Fearless became the best-selling album of 2009 in the United States. The album won four Grammy Awards, with Swift becoming the youngest Album of the Year winner. Swift penned every track of her Speak Now (2010) album without any co-writers. It debuted at number-one in the United States and the single "Mean" won two Grammy Awards. Swift's fourth album Red (2012) yielded the successful singles "We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together" and "I Knew You Were Trouble". Her fifth album, the pop-focused 1989 (2014) earned a Guinness World Record after it became her third consecutive album to sell a million copies in its first week in the US. Its singles "Shake It Off", "Blank Space", and "Bad Blood" reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100. The album received three Grammy Awards, with Swift becoming the first woman and fifth person overall to win Album of the Year award twice.

Swift is known for narrative songs about her personal experiences. As a songwriter, she has been honored by the Nashville Songwriters Association and the Songwriters Hall of Fame. Swift's other achievements include ten Grammy Awards, five Guinness World Records, one Emmy Award, 23 Billboard Music Awards, 11 Country Music Association Awards, eight Academy of Country Music Awards, and one Brit Award. She is one of the best-selling artists of all time, having sold more than 40 million albums—including 27.1 million in the U.S.—and 130 million single downloads. She has appeared twice in Time 100 in 2010 and 2015, and five times in Forbes' "Top-Earning Women In Music", ranking among the top three each year. She became the youngest woman ever to be included on Forbes' "100 Most Powerful Women" list in 2015, and was the highest-paid celebrity in 2016. In addition to her music career, Swift has appeared in an episode of the television series CSI: Crime Scene Investigation in 2009 and the romantic comedy Valentine's Day (2010). She has also hosted an episode of the late-night show Saturday Night Live in 2009.