Pop is Dead, Long Live Rap?

Rap music feels like it has taken the place of pop music in the mainstream — but is this a new phenomenon? Here’s a quick look at the history of rap music on the Billboard Hot 100, the cycle of relevance between pop and rap, and what that might mean for the future of mainstream music.

Written by Haley Kennis

On Sept. 16, 1979, a trio called Sugarhill Gang released “Rapper’s Delight,” and by January 1980 it became the first rap song to ever reach the Top 40 on the Billboard Hot 100. In September 1980, the band Blondie released “Rapture,” which became the first number one single on the charts to feature any rap vocals. By 1989, the Best Rap Performance category was added to the Grammys and the rap genre was finally cemented into widespread public knowledge. “Rapper’s Delight” and “Rapture” are widely considered to be the first examples of rap music in the mainstream, starting what would transform into an unstoppable force in modern music.

As ubiquitous and influential as rap music is today, it hasn’t been like this for very long. Even during the past decade, I noticed when rap was at the forefront of popular music and when it faded to the background. It was still a bit surprising when I looked at the Billboard Year-End Hot 100 Songs charts (which measures how songs performed on the charts over a specific year) from the years 1989 to 2018 and saw that there were clear cycles of how people were listening to rap in the past three decades.

Rap music’s first cycle of popularity on the Hot 100 was pretty strong but looks like nothing compared to its popularity today. In 1989, only about 10 of the top 100 songs on the Year-End chart were rap/hip-hop songs. In 1990 this number was the same, but history was made when the first completely rap song hit No. 1 on the regular charts — “Ice Ice Baby” by Vanilla Ice. From 1990 to 1996, rap only became more prevalent on the charts, peaking in 1993 when one-fourth of all the songs on the Year-End list were rap songs, and in 1995 when “Gangsta’s Paradise” by Coolio was the first rap song to top the list. Old-school style hip-hop started the decade, but the meteoric rise of gangsta rap from the east and west coasts of the United States skyrocketed iconic rappers like Tupac Shakur and The Notorious B.I.G. into stardom during the mid-’90s to completely redefine the genre. However, there was a sudden shift back to typical pop music that began in 1998, and no rap songs entered the top ten of the Year-End charts for three years. The number of rap songs on the Year-End list sank back down to only ten in 2000, the same number at the beginning of the decade. The rise of bubblegum pop, boy bands, and teen pop starlets like *NSYNC and Britney Spears seemed to push rap out of the spotlight around the turn of the century.

Rap music wouldn’t be out of the spotlight for long, though. Beginning in 2001, the second wave of rap’s mainstream popularity defined the entire coming decade. Though there were only 18 rap songs on the Year-End list in 2001, the number quickly spiked to 42 only two years later in 2003. The second rap song to top the Year-End list also came out in 2003 — “In Da Club” by 50 Cent. The genre hit a monumental level of popularity in 2004, when 44 rap songs appeared on the list, and “Yeah!” by Usher smashed all competition out of the way to top the chart. Two more hip-hop songs defined entire years on the top of the Year-End charts — “Low” by Flo Rida in 2008 and “Boom Boom Pow” by The Black Eyed Peas in 2009.

For most of the 2000s, nearly half of the Year-End chart were rap songs, and new types of rap music from all across the country were gaining success: crunk from the southern United States, alternative rap from Chicago and other parts of the Midwest, and snap music from Atlanta. Artists like Kanye West, OutKast (pictured above), Lil Jon, Nelly, 50 Cent, Missy Elliot, The Black Eyed Peas, Jay-Z, T.I., Ludacris, Eminem, and many more helped establish rap’s dominance over much of the decade.

But just like the end of the ‘90s, rap suddenly dropped out of mainstream interest starting in 2009 and hit another low of only 17 songs on the list in 2013 (though “Thrift Shop” by Macklemore topped the Year-End list in 2013, it was vastly different than the rap that came before). Once again, it appeared that the rise of mainstream pop stars like Lady Gaga, Katy Perry, Ke$ha, Usher, Ne-Yo, and more pushed rap off of its throne of the 2000s.

The 2010s started out fairly pop-centric, but within the past three years this has definitely changed. From 2014 to 2016, only about a quarter of the songs on the Year-End list were rap songs, and very few were in the top ten. Suddenly, in 2017, rap burst back into the mainstream, with 39 songs on the list. In 2018, Drake’s “God’s Plan” topped the Year-End list and 46 songs were rap songs, the largest number of rap songs that have ever appeared on the list. Some of the biggest conversations about music in 2019 revolved around rap songs: “Old Town Road” by Lil Nas X sparked discussion about how to even define the genre at all and where it belonged on the charts. This discussion, the catchiness, and the meme-ability of the song kept “Old Town Road” at number one for a mind-boggling 19 weeks and broke the record for longest running No. 1 single of all time. Rap music is clearly reigning supreme over other mainstream genres today.

But does this mean we are in the middle of another wave of rap music’s popularity? Is it possible that by the end of the ‘20s, mainstream pop will become the focus of the American public yet again? This begs an even bigger question as well: if rap music becomes the majority of music that is popular in the coming years, should it be called pop music? We won’t be able to answer these questions until we see what kind of music Americans are listening to in the next few years. Still, since rap music was the most prevalent it has ever been on the Year-End Hot 100 last year, and is only getting more widespread every day, it isn’t too far-fetched to think that this might not be another wave at all — but the start of a new era of music.

Afterglow ATXNovember 25, 2019