Publishing is full of rankings, from power lists to best-dressed lists to under-40 lists. The CULT100 is different. There is just one criterion for inclusion—but it’s a high bar.

To qualify, a candidate must be actively shaping and changing our culture in real time. The people on this list represent five generations and hail from the worlds of food, publishing, art, fashion, activism, and entertainment. To put this group together, CULTURED‘s editors leveraged the full strength of our network, tapping artists, writers, and cultural leaders to tell us who they look to when they want to feel challenged, hopeful, and inspired.

Some members of the CULT100 are household names; others have been working behind the scenes to make possible the cultural encounters that stop us in our tracks. In a time of binary thinking, the creators featured in this year’s list are embracing contradiction, bouncing willfully between disciplines, and refusing to take no for an answer. They have guts, vision, and a potent cocktail of realism and optimism. None of them is shying away from the anxiety of our moment. Instead, they are thinking big, sharing generously, and embodying courage. The good news is, their work makes us all a little bit braver, too.

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KAREEM RAHMA
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SABRINA SANTIAGO
Photography by SABRINA SANTIAGO

RASHID JOHNSON

ARTIST

A singular voice whose oeuvre plumbs the anxieties of contemporary life, the artist’s trajectory has taken him from his hometown of Chicago all the way to the Guggenheim’s rotunda—where his major survey is on view through next year.

WHAT’S ONE BOOK, WORK OF ART, OR FILM THAT GOT YOU THROUGH AN IMPORTANT MOMENT IN YOUR LIFE? Spike Lee’s film Do the Right Thing. It got me through a moment of adolescence when I was trying to understand what the world could be for a young boy against an urban backdrop.

NAME AN INFLUENCE OF YOURS THAT MIGHT SURPRISE PEOPLE. I’m really into George Clinton from Parliament-Funkadelic. There’s a natural sense of avant-garde and unexpected rigor born of his contribution to music that is very influential to me. It’s allowed me to think about doing the unexpected.

"I would describe myself as kind, complicated, confident, and confused."

WHO DO YOU CALL THE MOST? My mother.

WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME YOU WERE STARSTRUCK? When I met Posdnuos, Plug 1 from De La Soul, at the Pérez Art Museum Miami gala in 2019. It’s probably the only time I was ever starstruck. I told him how big a fan I was and how big an influence his music had been. It made me see there were people like me in the world.

HOW WOULD YOU DESCRIBE YOURSELF? I would describe myself as kind, complicated, confident, and confused.

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KAREEM RAHMA
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LONNIE HOLLEY