Hip-Hop is making history on the Billboard charts, but not in a good way.
It’s halfway through 2023 and there has yet to be a Hip-Hop song or album to top the charts.
According to a report from Billboard, not a single Hip-Hop project has achieved a #1 spot on either its Billboard Hot 100 or the Billboard 200 charts. The decline marks the first time in 30 years that hip-hop has been knocked off its top spot for this long of a stretch since 1993.
In June of 2022, six rappers had released albums that went on to chart at the #1 spot: Gunna (DS4Ever), Lil Durk (7220), Tyler, The Creator (Call Me If You Get Lost), Pusha T (It’s Almost Dry), Future (I Never Liked You), and Kendrick Lamar (Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers) , while Future, Drake and Tems’ “Wait for U” and Jack Harlow’s “First Class” became #1 singles.
Just one year later, Hip-Hop has been curiously absent from the top of Billboard’s marquee album and singles charts.
With most of Hip-Hop’s superstars – Drake, Kendrick Lamar and Future, to name a few – having dropped their albums last year, the lack of new work from the genre’s heavyweights is one factor in the lapse of #1 projects.
Billboard also had its own theories on the situation, one of which is that as a genre, Hip-Hop is “losing its dominance in terms of market share.” The publication reported that Hip-Hop accounts for 26% of the music market, compared to around 28% last year.