His sprawling discography makes it tough for younger listeners to find a proper point of entry.

Tupac has breadth in the streaming era, but his biggest hits lack the universality of Biggie’s (Pac’s 10 most popular songs on Spotify have accrued more than 300 million streams Biggie’s have more than half a billion). Spotify’s stream count here doesn’t even include the roughly 40 million listens for The Don Killuminati: The 7 Day Theory, the 1996 album released under the Pac alias Makaveli, or the album he made with the short-lived California group Thug Life. The West Coast rapper had a prolific output that included five solo studio albums in as many years and a seemingly endless trove of unreleased material that has been meted out haphazardly in posthumous albums, compilations, soundtracks, and live recordings following his death. It should come as no surprise that, in terms of raw streams, Pac edges out Biggie. How are today’s young people connecting with the legendary artists of yesteryear, and what does it say about the way these artists will be interpreted in the future? 2Pac Pac or Biggie? Britney or Christina? Beatles or Stones? In the series Pop Battles, The Ringer will try to settle long-standing music rivalries using listener data from Spotify, the world’s largest music-streaming service. One of the most rewarding parts of being a music fan is picking a side and arguing for it to the ends of the earth.

Spotify notorious big albums