To Notorious B.I.G. on his 1997 song “I Love The Dough,” being an actor was a bad thing. It meant that you were fake enough to be able to convince people that you were a bad ass, when really you aren’t hard at all.

But in 2015, the situation for today’s rappers is different. If you’re a rapper-actor, it doesn’t mean that you’re a poser—it means that you have enough popularity as a rapper that people want to see you in other art forms. Below are 8 rappers who played major roles in not just rap music’s transition to the mainstream, but rap acting’s transition to the mainstream as well, as judged through their five most recent films’ average score on Rotten Tomatoes.

Ice Cube

Rotten Tomatoes Average: 69%

Although he has a reputation for taking any and every role that might come across his desk, Ice Cube is on quite a roll recently. He was a producer on Straight Outta Compton (89%), and appeared in The Book of Life (81%), 22 Jump Street (85%), and 21 Jump Street (85%). 

These high scores might be a result of Ice Cube’s extensive acting experience. His career goes all the way back to 1991, when he starred in Boyz n the Hood. That movie today scores a 96% on Rotten Tomatoes, which makes it a must-watch for many Hip Hop fans.

André 3000

Rotten Tomatoes Average: 53%

If any rapper was ever going to adopt the completely immersive method-driven style of acting, it was going to be a man who was equally untraditional in naming his son Seven. For 2013’s Jimi: All is By My Side, André 3000 not only learned to play guitar left-handed, but also lost over 20 pounds for the role. Alongside this solid 66% effort, though, are films like Battle In Seattle (54%) and Will Ferrell’s Semi-Pro (21%). 

But the upside of having rappers appear in films is that often those rappers will contribute to the movie’s music. For the Jimi soundtrack, André 3000 shows the same eclecticism that he did during his OutKast era when he covers The Beatles, blues legend Muddy Waters, and still others.

Common

Rotten Tomatoes Average: 52%

Possibly making Notorious B.I.G. turn over in his grave, Common actually has won an Oscar, for his musical contributions to 2014’s seminal film Selma. Okay, so it wasn’t actually for his acting alone, but it does make him one of the few artists ever talented enough to have won both an Oscar and a Grammy. Common, playing a close supporter of Martin Luther King, Jr., is convincing enough in Selma as a civil rights activist to make the audience temporarily forget that he is actually a huge celebrity. 

Common has had other solid appearances, such as in 2008’s action thriller Wanted, but the fact that his most recent one is his best—Selma is a 99% stud—is a good sign for things to come.

Ludacris

Rotten Tomatoes Average: 50%

Almost all by himself, Ludacris justifies the sometimes-messy, always-engrossing crossover from rapping to acting. He was a major player in some of the biggest summer smashes recently, like Fast Five. But Ludacris has also appeared in some films with Oscar nods, even if his name wasn’t the one that appeared on the Golden Statue; Crash broke the hearts of many Brokeback Mountain fans when it won the 2004 Best Picture award over the Heath Ledger–Jake Gyllenhall love story.

If Ryan Reynolds, with his similar 53% Rotten Tomatoes score, has enough star power and acting skill to keep on getting major roles, Ludacris definitely should get more than he has so far.

50 Cent

Rotten Tomatoes Average: 49%

Before he went bankrupt, 50 Cent really could’ve benefited from paying for some acting lessons. He does get a boost from showing up in one of the best movies of 2015, Spy, which has a sky-high 93% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. But if you take his smaller supporting role in that film out, his average falls from 49% to just 38%. One of his movies, 2014’s The Prince, is indeed very impressive, but not for being good: It somehow managed to completely whiff on its 0% rating. 

In any event, 50 is sure to have opportunities to make things right when he appears in upcoming films—he has to make that money back somehow.

Snoop Dogg

Rotten Tomatoes Average: 47%

It might be hard to come back from an appearance as Captain Mack in 2004’s Soul Plane (18%), but a decade later Snoop Dogg is upping his game with Pitch Perfect 2 and Take Me To The River. It might help him that in Pitch Perfect 2, he simply played his lovable self, and not a fictional character. 

But with Scary Movie 5 certainly not helping things (4%), he has picked up a somewhat ugly 47% rating lately. That probably still doesn’t trouble Snoop or his fans very much. He’s simply too much fun to watch, in real life or otherwise, for him to slide off the silver screen any time soon.

Eminem

Rotten Tomatoes Average: 43%

So as it turns out, Eminem is a really, really good rapper, but a really, really not-great actor. Although he doesn’t have quite as many films to his name here as others do, he has still appeared in his fair share. Unfortunately, films like 360 (21%) aren’t much help in getting his rating just barely out of the 30s.

Like most rappers, Eminem’s highest-rated films are nonfiction documentaries about rap itself, like Something From Nothing: The Art Of Rap (92%.) But in his fictional roles, Eminem falls flat more often than not. At least we’ll always have 8 Mile.

Mos Def

Rotten Tomatoes Average: 40%

Although he is one of the few rappers who was actually an actor before he was a lyricist, this kind of deep experience, honed in theatre throughout his schooling years, doesn’t always come through in Mos Def’s work. Even with that experience, Mos Def’s 5 most recent efforts still only add up to a measly 40% average. 

Maybe Mos Def comes back from South Africa soon and tries to set all of this right. Then he could also team back up with Talib Kweli for a new Black Star album, whose rise to a top 15 Billboard chart spot in 1998 was a more favorable response than the one his work in acting is currently getting.