No matter how quick the wit, no stand-up comic starts out a success. Forget the top: on the way to the bottom rung, comics need to endure endless open-mic tryouts, log thousands of miles for little or no money and be thankful for 1:00 a.m. slots in front of drunken hecklers. And that’s just for starters. The further up the ladder they climb, the more pressure they face to consistently write and hone hour-plus sets that will power tours, specials and social media. Increasingly, they also choose to engage in a weekly form of digital improv known as the podcast.

As the first quarter of the 21st century comes to an end, Billboard set out to determine the best of that A-list: the top 25 stand-up comics of the last 25 years. To come up with these rankings, we polled experts that work with comic

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