Chris Goossens
3. It’s Not An Easy Process
The process of selecting the list takes over a year to complete. Starting in about October or November of the prior year, the XXL team talks to basically everybody involved in hip-hop. They survey hundreds of artists, producers, celebrities, friends, coworkers, and more. From there, a huge list is created of all possible freshmen. The last step of the process involves their team taking the list into huge studio to “argue it out” in hopes of creating the final XXL Freshman List, according to Editor-in-Chief Vanessa Satten.
