For the primary time in 35 years, not a single rap track cracked the Billboard Scorching 100’s High 40.
That sentence alone felt unreal to put in writing.
Hip-hop, the identical style that owned the charts, the tradition, the streets, and the Tremendous Bowl halftime present, vanished from America’s prime songs checklist for 2 straight weeks this fall.
However to me, it wasn’t a shock. This information is only a symptom of a bigger debate that has been ongoing in music and leisure.
The way in which we eat music and the best way artists create it have fully modified. Each technology reshapes sound, and that’s pure. Someplace between the rise of social media, streaming, and content material creation, the soul has been stripped from the music business. And hip-hop, the style that constructed itself on authenticity and uncooked storytelling, is getting hit.
I grew up in an period when artists had artist improvement, when expertise was groomed and skilled. Artists’ expertise alone wasn’t sufficient to have longevity, however their ardour and hustle did. Labels invested in artists’ sound, picture, and progress. You possibly can hear the starvation of their voices, really feel it of their lyrics. You couldn’t pretend it, as a result of the viewers might inform.
Now, all the things’s constructed for pace, fast listens, fast hits, fast fame. The music business doesn’t need timeless anymore; it needs trendable. TikTok dances transfer extra models than dwell performances. Playlists exchange albums. A track doesn’t want depth; it simply wants 15 seconds that sound good on a cellphone speaker.
And whereas everybody’s busy chasing streams, the standard’s gone to hell.
Streaming didn’t simply change how we pay attention; it modified why we pay attention. Again if you had to purchase a CD or vinyl bodily, you invested within the artist. I keep in mind going to Strawberry’s document retailer when a brand new album by an artist got here out. I studied the duvet and the contents inside, and had conversations with the man behind the counter in regards to the newest music that got here out. It created a way of group, pleasure, and anticipation.
As of late, music serves as background noise whereas scrolling by means of social media apps. It’s one thing that performs when you do one thing else.
So when Billboard says hip-hop’s market share has fallen from practically 30% in 2020 to 24% this 12 months, I get it. After I see the charts stuffed with pop and nation acts borrowing hip-hop’s beats, I get that too. The sound didn’t disappear — it simply bought repackaged, stripped of its roots, and bought again to us with out the flavour.
And whereas Billboard’s rule modifications, eradicating “recurrent” songs would possibly clarify a few of the chart drought, that’s not the actual story. The actual story is that the business isn’t cultivating the following technology.
That’s why Megan Thee Stallion’s breaking the drought together with her newest track “Lover Woman” debuting at No. 38 this month truly felt like there was a glimmer of hope. However it shouldn’t take a two-week drought to remind those who hip-hop nonetheless issues. And the style, so far as I’m involved, isn’t going to die.
I’m not going to lie, I’m nonetheless caught on the early 2000s, 90s, and 80s period of music. It’s timeless, evergreen, and nostalgic. Perhaps that makes me old-school. However I’ll take high quality over streamable any day. I don’t even know many of those new artists [and I’ve tried to take my time and truly listen to the music], and actually, I don’t know the way a lot longevity they are going to have. I’m rooting for the underground artists to get the shine they deserve. There are too many artists who aren’t mainstream that must be within the highlight proper now.
The tradition deserves higher. The artists deserve higher. All of us do.
