According to Forbes , the future of hip-hop entrepreneurship is in the hands of these artists.

For Post Malone, the future is now. The Syracuse-born rapper-singer’s album Stoney moved more than 1.5 million album-equivalent units in 2017, best among the recent releases of any hip-hop act besides Drake and Kendrick Lamar.

Malone is also following in the pair’s footsteps when it comes to making Forbes lists: he’s one of only ten acts in the Hip-Hop's Future Moguls Class of 2018 (formerly known as Hip-Hop Cash Princes). Malone is responsible for two of the five most-consumed hip-hop songs of the year—“Congratulations” and “Rockstar," the latter featuring listmate 21 Savage—moving more than 3.5 million units of each and generating hundreds of millions of streaming spins.

“Talent mixed with weirdness is a recipe for success in today’s society,” says Wendy Day, founder of Rap Coalition, an artist advocacy organization that has been helping hip-hop acts negotiate deals since the early 1990s. “I realized [Malone] would get to the money quickly when a 60-year-old woman at the LAX airport pulled up in her convertible bumping ‘Rockstar.’”

Day is one of the five experts on our panel of judges, joining radio personality Charlamagne Tha God, Universal Hip-Hop Museum president Rocky Bucano, yours truly and my Forbes colleague Natalie Robehmed, to pick this year’s class of Future Moguls. These are the young stars destined to one day land on our Highest-Paid Hip-Hop Acts ranking alongside the likes of Jay-Z, Diddy and Dr. Dre. In order to be eligible for Future Moguls, nominees must be under age 30 and cannot have appeared in a prior class, even as members of a group (sorry, Migos).

This year’s list more is diverse than usual by measures including age, ethnicity and gender. Chart topping hip-hop star Cardi B, body-positive rapper-singer Lizzo and producer Wondagurl give the Class of 2018 its highest percentage of female representation yet, part of the reason we decided it was time to change the name of the package from Cash Princes to the gender-neutral Future Moguls.

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Hip-Hop's Future Moguls: The Class of 2018
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The first step to hip-hop moguldom is recognition, and Cardi B has more of that than perhaps any other up-and-comer in the genre. With her gargantuan hit “Bodak Yellow,” which clocked more than 400 million on-demand streams—the fifth highest total for any song this year—she’s now grossing $150,000 or so per city on the road.

Lizzo came to prominence with her 2016 Coconut Oil EP, which included "Good As Hell"--that notched more than 10 million streams on Spotify. By contrast, Wondagurl stays behind the scenes on the boards by choice but has helped craft smash songs for Drake, Rihanna and Big Sean.

Listmate Lil Pump, just 17 years old, is one of a handful of rappers to make the jump from SoundCloud anonymity to mainstream success, thanks to "Gucci Gang." The song soared to No. 3 on the Billboard Hot 100. Vic Mensa and Dave East haven’t yet enjoyed the same sort of mainstream success as some of the other names on this list, but the former has been touring with Jay-Z while the latter has earned co-signs by Nas and Wiz Khalifa.

"I like seeing how today’s rap stars are embracing hip-hop to turn around their lives," says Bucano. "Before getting involved in the rap game, 21 Savage’s life was off the rail ... his music is dark and sinister, but it is a mirror reflection of his life in the hood. Dave East pursued his passion of writing rhymes and honed his lyrical skills to become one of New York’s rising rap stars."

Other acts are a bit further along in building their empires. Tyler, the Creator has been on the scene for the better part of a decade, but didn't get his first solo charting single until this year's "Who Dat Boy." He’s leveraging that success to help boost his streetwear line Golf Wang and annual festival Camp Flog Gnaw.

Playboi Carti has combined a warbling flow with relentless trap beats to create songs like "Magnolia," which garnered more than 150 million Spotify spins; his self-titled debut LP reached No. 12 on Billboard's charts. Carti has monetized his rise with partnerships like an Adidas video campaign that earned him an estimated six-figure payout. So when should we expect to see him on the Highest-Paid Hip-Hop Acts list?

“We’ll see,” he told Forbes a few months ago. “Hopefully tomorrow.”

The rest of his Future Moguls peers look to be right there with him.

Hip-Hop’s Future Moguls was reported and edited by Zack O’Malley Greenburg and Natalie Robehmed. For more on the business of hip-hop, check out Zack’s new book, 3 Kings: Diddy, Dr. Dre, Jay-Z and Hip-Hop’s Multibillion-Dollar Rise.