Apple Music Awards

In 2019, we introduced the Apple Music Awards, an honor as innovative and inventive as music's best and boldest artists. Now, at the end of each year, we crown the year's most impactful musicians and kick the show off with a series of special events, intimate performances, and exclusive interviews. The highlight, though, is our one-of-a-kind award, built from the same laser-cut silicon wafers that power Apple's microprocessors. It's a unique token and event designed to shine a light on the game-changing stars who upended convention and cut through the conversation. Scroll down now to relive past Apple Music Awards and their winners.

Only four years ago, Lil Baby had never rapped before. In 2020, he fully arrived as one of hip-hop’s biggest names, his signature woozy flows an amazing addition to any song. Released in February, the Atlanta native's second album My Turn—filled with dark piano-trap beats and Baby’s melodic drawl—dominated Apple Music's album charts for weeks. The album spawned a handful of memorable singles, including the vulnerable “Emotionally Scarred,” which, in hindsight, helped foreshadow his next move: In June, as the US was rocked by protests over the deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor at the hands of the police, he dropped “The Bigger Picture,” explicitly responding to racism and police brutality in America from a hard-gained, strikingly first-person perspective. Few, if any, other songs captured the movement and the moment better. Lil Baby has been an intriguing voice since his debut mixtape in 2017, but 2020 was the year he became an undeniable star.

With two No. 1 singles (and cosigns from Beyoncé and Cardi B with them), a viral dance challenge, endorsement deals with fashion and beauty brands, and the admiration of peers, fans, and seemingly everyone with a social media account, it’s safe to say Megan Thee Stallion ran 2020. The Up Next alum and self-crowned Hot Girl had the kind of breakthrough year that defines the term: conquering charts, social media feeds, awards shows, and Saturday Night Live, with a powerful performance of her “Savage Remix.” The best part of it all? She’s clearly just getting started—her debut album dropped November 20.

Taylor Swift has been one of music’s preeminent and most decorated songwriters for more than a decade, and with her latest records, the surprise-released folklore and sister album evermore, she laid bare the magic behind perhaps her biggest strength. Written and recorded in isolation during the first few months of the COVID-19 pandemic, with coproduction from Aaron Dessner of The National, Jack Antonoff, and others, both albums ditch the big, radio-ready, chart-topping sparkle of her past releases for bare-bones indie-folk instrumentation, stripping her songs down to the very studs. What’s left is some of the deepest and most vivid music and lyrics of her career, with wistful third-person stories about love triangles, ghosts, and trauma.

The Tin Man’s rusty joints? A dirty windshield wiper? No one knows what the two-note robotic squeaks at the top of Roddy Ricch’s “The Box” are, but everyone instantly knows exactly what song they're introducing. The Compton rapper’s breakout single, anchored by his loping sing-rapping and a shout-along earworm hook, was the year's biggest and most popular, accumulating more than 460 million Apple Music streams worldwide to date, launching countless memes, and topping the charts for longer than any other song in 2020.

Propelled in part by the monster success of single “The Box,” Roddy Ricch’s debut has run up more than 1.5 billion Apple Music streams worldwide to date. Please Excuse Me for Being Antisocial, filled with songs that similarly get stuck in your head, made him one of the most prominent faces of West Coast rap. In addition to dominating on Apple Music, the album debuted atop the Billboard 200 at the same time “The Box” ruled Billboard’s Hot 100—a feat not accomplished by a rapper since Kanye West in 2005. Far from a one-hit wonder, Roddy Ricch released an album that proved he’s an artist capable of commanding attention far beyond the three-minute space of a song.