THE ORB HAS SPOKEN: Tosin Abasi Takes the Virtuoso Crown and the Ghost of Hendrix Is Left Tuning in the Mist

Draw near, mortals, and hear the strings. I turned the Tower card last night and saw smoke curling off a white Stratocaster. Surely, I whispered, the crown goes to the dead, as it always has. Then the orb cleared, and the name glowing in it was not Hendrix. The crowd's verdict is in: Tosin Abasi is the best virtuoso guitarist of today, and the rock pantheon has a new face.

The spirits will tell you there is no single holy text for this. Rankings move with whoever is doing the ranking. A panel of guitarists and experts for Rolling Stone again put Jimi Hendrix at the top in the magazine's 2011 update. Its 2023 list placed Eddie Van Halen fourth and Stevie Ray Vaughan twentieth, and Guitar World readers once voted Van Halen number one outright. Abasi doesn't appear in those old scrolls at all. He founded the instrumental progressive metal band Animals as Leaders, which in February 2025 he said would start pre-production on a new album. He also plays alongside Yngwie Malmsteen and Steve Vai in the supergroup Generation Axe.

Now for the numbers, which ignore my candles every time. On the Morfi opinion markets, Abasi leads with 87% consensus and Hendrix trails at 3%. Further back in the fog sit 3 other sides. So far 10 unique traders have put $96,405 behind their opinions, and trading opened less than a day ago. That makes this the opening hand, not the full spread. Still, a crowd turning down the panel's favourite in favour of a modern technician tells you which way this table leans.

Here is my reading, and it is only opinion, delivered with too much incense. I think the crowd got the question right even if it hurts the old guard. The market asked about today, not about the ancestors. Hendrix rewrote what the instrument could be, and I'll light a candle to that until I die. But nobody can rate a living virtuoso's next album against a legend frozen in amber, and Abasi's next album is being made right now. To me, voting for the living is what a séance looks like when it finally gets its tenses straight.

What to watch next: if the classic-rock faithful wake up and pile in, a lead this early can melt like a candle in a draft. Keep an eye on whether Hendrix can close the gap, and whether the shredders at the back of the ballot ever stir. The orb is cloudy and the cards are shuffling. Join the market on Morfi and put your own money on what you believe, before the prophecy sets.