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hip-hop decline? not buying it

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Hey! Hope you enjoyed the holiday weekend. I spent at least 10 minutes of my weekend rewatching Rick Ross’ failed attempt at diving into a pool over and over. I’m surprised he doesn’t have a reality show yet. He’s pure comedy.

Today’s episode is about the state of hip-hop. The Billboard charts and market share charts point to a decline in recent years. But is it that simple? What’s really going on?

I’ve written about this before, but I wanted to dig back into it on the podcast with Wall Street Journal’s Neil Shah, who has written about this topic. Here’s our take.

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the real story behind hip-hop’s decline

Lil Uzi Vert’s Pink Tape will be the first 2023 hip-hop album to top the Billboard 200. It’s a 26-track album with parts that sound more like a nu-metal tribute than rap, but that’s beside the point. With its June 30 release, Uzi’s Pink Tape is the furthest in the calendar year it took for a hip-hop album to top the Billboard 200 since 1993. 30 years! That year, Cypress Hill’s Black Sunday topped the chart on the week of August 7.

​Billboard published an article about why no rap album or song has topped its charts in 2023. The reasons are the lack of hip-hop stars who released albums, less room to grow than other genres, the impact of deaths, drugs, and legal issues, chart stagnation, and the return of club music.

Those are all valid points, but there’s more to dig into here.

how the decline is measured

To be clear, hip-hop is still the most listened-to genre of music by far, and it’s still growing. According to Luminate, it has a 26.8% share of U.S. recorded music consumption; the next closest genre is rock at 20%. But that hip-hop number was 27.7% in 2021 and reached a peak of 28.2% in 2020. After a heightened growth period in the 2010s, hip-hop’s growth has slowed down.

The streaming era did two things for hip-hop. First, it reduced the gatekeepers’ ability to control the music supply. Sales were no longer limited by what the label expected an album could sell. Streaming allowed hip-hop’s consumption to more closely match true demand.

Second, the new technology of streaming attracted hip-hop fans first, which led to an early-mover advantage. Hip-hop’s popularity was over-indexed in the early days of streaming, as in social media and other consumer tech platforms.

Streaming’s rapid growth phase got a boost from the short-lived album bundle phase. Album bundles were a way to encourage the sale of physical copies. Billboard—and by extension, the major record labels—devalued streams since they require at least 1,250 streams to equal 1 album sold. Album bundles helped level the playing field by combining albums with what fans want, which is merch.

Travis Scott’s Astroworld (2018) had a 24-hour e-commerce operation to dominate the charts for weeks. In 2019, DJ Khaled infamously lost out on the #1 album when part of his album bundles were disqualified, paving the way for Tyler The Creator’s IGOR to win that week. As fun as it was, having two rap albums compete for the top spot feels like a past era.

But now, the script has flipped. Bundles are gone (for now), but they have been replaced by vinyl (which operates more like a merch item since more than 50% of recent buyers don’t own a player). The limited supply of vinyl materials has given record labels discretion on which artists get first access to the inventory. The pop artists—Adele, Taylor Swift, and Harry Styles, get priority and reap the rewards of impressive first-week sales. Meanwhile, other stars in other genres have to wait, even if their streaming numbers are quite similar!

Sadly, we’re back to the days of labels controlling supply.

what counts as hip-hop?

Here’s what I wrote in the 2022 Culture Report:

If hip-hop’s global impact were categorized appropriately, no one would talk about a “decline.” Latin music is one of the fastest-growing regions in the world, and most of that revenue is generated by artists who, like Bad Bunny, consider themself hip-hop.

This is even more important given the impacts of glocalization. Streaming’s growth helped bring local cultures together, which limited the impact of export music. Even if hip-hop dominates English-speaking markets, it will still be in decline given the rise of other countries that no longer need to rely on Western cultural exports.

It will be ironic to see more reports on hip-hop’s continued decline when the music “taking its place” has trap beat production and a “rapping” style cadence to the delivery. It feels unfortunately inevitable.

but is there any merit to this?

We had to ask. Otherwise, I sound like an old-head hip-hop fan who chooses to ignore the headwinds.

When people discuss classic hip-hop albums, I rarely hear them mention an album released in the past five years. Part of that’s due to my age and bias, but it’s also a symptom of the current era.

Who are the most promising U.S. hip-hop artists under 30? It’s NBA YoungBoy, Lil Uzi Vert, Ice Spice, Lil’ Baby, and Baby Keem. They’re all talented, but would you bet money that they’ll all be as big as they are today (or bigger) five years from now? Probably not.

Plus, I’ve heard from more than enough managers that budgets are lower than ever, and artists are expected to do more with less. Some artists who think they are superstar talent will get indie movie budgets instead. There may be a huge disconnect between artists and labels on expectations.

the impact on record labels investing in hip-hop

Regardless of the underlying methodology or merit behind the methods, the narrative of hip-hop’s decline will lead to fewer dollars being invested in the genre and its talent.

Labels may be less willing to invest in hip-hop as a genre. If the genre is less helpful with the ultimate goal of gaining market share, then label heads will look to other genres for that bump. In turn, those genres will get the dollars that went to hip-hop.

In the early 1980s, a lot of Black music was in decline. Disco was over, many labels wanted no part with Black artists. Several legends were cut from their roster, and attention shifted elsewhere. That spawned a new pathway for growth, but it was still few and far between.

Artist development and breakout success are already tough to navigate. People already feel subject to the whim of the TikTok algorithm. A potential dip in investment in hip-hop will make matters worse.

Even if a few more upcoming 2023 hip-hop releases top the charts, it won’t change the overall trend. This may all be cyclical, but that doesn’t change the impact on the current era of artists.

Listen to the rest of our episode for more on:

• What’s the best way to measure success?
• Why hip-hop was held back in the CD era?
• Why Drake and other superstars are “proven IP”

Listen to our full conversation here:

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