01
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Britney Spears Before 2007, Britney Spears was just your average Mouseketeer-to-Mom blonde pop star with over 83 million albums sold, and a couple of divorces and babies under her belt. But after her shocking performance at the 2007 VMAs, the hair clippers incident, more legal woes than Enron, and one of her most risqué videos yet, 2007 will forever go down in history as The Year Of Spears.
02
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Akon Whether he's rollin' around the sandy beaches, helping Gwen Stefani bust out of jail, smackin' it up with Eminem, backing up Wyclef, or hurling concertgoers into a live audience, the unmistakable African singer gets a life sentence for keeping 2007 sounding seriously smooth.
03
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T-Pain Why do they call him T-Pain when his robo sound feels so good? No one hit up the bar (or the bartender, for that matter); collaborated with more A-list artists like Akon, Kanye West, Chris Brown, R. Kelly, and Bow Wow; and no one namechecked themselves more than T-Pain. In just a year, the man single-handedly made the talk box cool again and self-referencing an absolute must. Viva la Pain!
04
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Rihanna Remember when you thought 'SOS' was the jam? Then Rihanna rolled out 'Umbrella', painted herself gold and went Platinum with Good Girl Gone Bad. It's like before 2007, she was a little speck of a star, and now she's the Sun -- relatively speaking, of course, because everybody knows she's even hotter than the actual Sun. Basically, we're saying that 2007 was a very, very good year to be Rihanna.
05
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Fergie Tearing a page from the Gwen Stefani Handbook, Fergie let Black Eyed Peas simmer on the backburner while she launched an aggressive solo assault on the pop charts with The Dutchess which reigned through 2007. While we were thankful for 2006's 'London Bridge' and the free spelling lesson that came with 'Fergalicious,' we really tumbled for 'Clumsy' and her 'Big Girls Don't Cry' tear-jerker too.
06
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50 Cent OK, so Kanye's Graduation album trumphed 50's Curtis, but when you've already sold over 22 million albums worldwide, what difference does a few hundred thousand units really make? Especially when Bridgeport, Connecticut gave 50 his own day, and he became the second wealthiest artist in rap, right behind Jay-Z. Yes, we're confident that 50 still spent much of '07 laughing his way to the bank.
07
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Avril Lavigne She may be a married woman, but Mrs. Deryck Whibley spent much of 2007 trying to steal away an unattainable love interest from his undeserving inamorata -- a move that earned her a #1 spot on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, after her third album, The Best Damn Thing, debuted at #1. And now, we can hardly remember a time when Avril wasn't synonymous with the words 'She's like so whatever.'
08
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Beyoncé After her 'Beautiful Liar' collaboration with Shakira redefined sexy, Beyoncé single-handedly dominated 2007 with the re-release of her triple-platinum, Grammy-nominated B'Day solo album, which outfitted each song on the album with its own video -- several of which Beyoncé herself directed. What would 2007 have been without 'Irreplaceable'? We don't even wanna know.
09
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Fall Out Boy Here's more evidence to support our theory that Fall Out Boy runs on a combination of adrenaline, fame, Red Bull and balls: After Infinity On High debuted at #1 in February, the guys played three cities in one day, toured the U.S. all spring into the summer, played around the world from late summer to fall, then finished off the year touring back in the states. Thnks fr the mmrs, guys. All of 'em.
10
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Chris Brown There are few artists whose breakthroughs you can trace back to one defining moment. But anyone who saw Chris Brown blow the roof off the Palms during his 2007 VMA performance knew they were witnessing history. His renditions of 'Wall Wall,' 'Kiss Kiss' and 'Billie Jean' launched him into superstardom. We wish him nothing but decades of Michael Jackson levels of success, minus all the cray-cray stuff.
