Billboard: ‘Is Hip-Hop’s Dominance Slipping?’ “My Concern Is the Magic Is Gone” says Carl Chery

[Kuma the Bear]

While hip-hop/R&B remains the industry's best-performing genre, its growth is slowing and execs are concerned excitement is stagnating.

In 2018, Nielsen Soundscan’s year-end music industry report confirmed that R&B/hip-hop was the most popular genre in America. Nine of the 10 most consumed songs in the United States were hip-hop/R&B songs, and as streaming became the dominant way to consume music, eight of the 10 most streamed artists were rappers.

That report focused on 2017, but the period between 2015-2018 was a crescendo for the genre. Established artists like Ye, Jay-Z and Lil Wayne still had more in the tank; younger stars like Drake, Kendrick Lamar and Nicki Minaj put their mark on the culture; and rising stars like Pop Smoke, Juice WRLD, XXXTENTACION and Cardi B were already scoring RIAA plaques. Everything was pointing up.

Looking at the hip-hop landscape today, you might get a different feeling. Rap is still enormously popular, but its growth is slowing. Luminate’s mid-year report revealed that R&B/hip-hop still has the largest overall market share of any genre in the United States with 27.6% — but that’s a decline from last year’s 28.4%, even though it widened its lead at the top in terms of overall equivalent album units. The genre’s total on-demand streaming growth is up 6.2% in 2022, but that’s lower than the rate of the market overall, which is up 11.6%.

“I will say, I’m concerned,” says Carl Chery, Spotify’s creative director and head of urban. Chery says he’s been alarmed about rap since last year: “2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, those years felt magical. My concern is that the magic is gone.”

There’s a variety of reasons the genre’s future feels precarious. First, rap’s superstars like Drake, Kendrick Lamar and Post Malone are aging into a different chapter of their careers, less invested in chasing hits. This year, Drake dropped the dancefloor detour, Honestly, Nevermind, while Kendrick made the deeply personal Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers and Post Malone released his darkest album yet, Twelve Carat Toothache. The albums debuted with respectable numbers, but slid down the Billboard 200 relatively quickly after — and while each of their previous albums spawned Hot 100-topping smashes (“God’s Plan,” “HUMBLE,” “rockstar”), this time, between the three of them, only Drake’s “Jimmy Cooks” went to No. 1, where it lasted a week. Post told Billboard earlier this year, “I don’t need a No. 1; that doesn’t matter to me no more, and at a point, it did.”

Those artists are carrying even more weight because of rap’s second problem; a number of would-be superstars died young. The late Pop Smoke, Juice WRLD and XXXTENTACION were three of the most important rappers of the past few years, not only because they moved units but because they were stylistic innovators. Their premature passings leave a void at the genre’s center — one that has only widened with the further losses of Nipsey Hussle, Mac Miller, Lil Peep, King Von, Young Dolph and, most recently, PnB Rock.

“Unfortunately, we have those tragedies that don’t let those culture-shifters see out their days and fulfill their purpose for the sub-genre they’re repping,” says Letty Peniche, who hosts Power Mornings on Power 106 in L.A. “We didn’t just lose [XXX, Pop, Juice], it also halted that wave.”

Then there’s rap’s third problem: There aren’t as many hot prospects among rap’s rookie class.

“The last couple of years, we’re not seeing as many new stars emerge,” says Chery. “[From 2015-2018], there were just a lot of guys we would see seemingly come out of nowhere and become huge stars and put up numbers that would rival people that have been established. We’re not really seeing that right now.”

It’s not like we haven’t seen breakout rappers in 2022 — artists like GloRilla, SleazyWorld Go and Yeat are talented and may have bright futures ahead of them. But with the exception of Yeat, their success is tied to hit singles and they haven’t established their bonafides via full-length projects. While they’ve performed impressively for newcomers, they haven’t put up near the superstar-type numbers Chery refers to.

Meanwhile, some of rap’s most promising upstarts have seen their fortunes turn quickly. DaBaby’s 2020 album, Blame It On Baby, moved 124,000 album-equivalent units in its first week; after a couple of underperforming projects rehashing the same formula, 2022’s Baby On Baby 2 moved a mere 17,000 in its first week. Megan Thee Stallion won the Grammy for best new artist, but her Traumazine album did lower first-week numbers than her debut and it hasn’t spawned a hit close to “Savage.” Roddy Ricch scored the last major pre-pandemic No. 1 hit with “The Box,” but his last single as a lead artist, “Stop Breathing,” has yet to hit the Hot 100. One of 2022’s bright spots was watching Gunna ascend from Young Thug protégé to standalone star as his “Pushing P” became the kind of cultural meme rap routinely produces, yet his achievement was overshadowed when he and Thug were arrested on a RICO charge that may land them both in prison for years.

Is Hip-Hop’s Dominance Slipping? ‘My Concern Is the Magic Is Gone’

 

[TripleAgent]

Pushing garbage catching up.

 

[Playaz Eyez]

Yikes at Post Malone being part of the “aging into different charters of their careers”. That’s a scummy ass fraudulent vulture that should’ve never been pushed into hip hop in the first place.

 

[the elastic]

The fact that Billboard groups R&B and Hip/Hop together is

 

[FluffyEyes]

The fact that Billboard groups R&B and Hip/Hop together is

It's actually extremely obnoxious. R&B doesn't have the marketshare or popularity of Rap music right and throwing them together the way they do erases real R&B artists and the music specifically.

 

[Renegade47]

i told nikkas in 2015 that trap shyt peaked they told me i was wrong cus it was topping the charts and bad and boujee was #1. once again i was fukking right that shyt was and has been garbage for a while now. getting by by the graces of the machine now that its so stale and they homogenized the sound of hip hop and rnb they do not know wtf to do or where to look. capitalism ruins fukking everything. clear channel/iheart radio is to blame along with the jews in suits running these labels.

its over.

house/dance music gonna be running shyt soon. people already talking about being tired of section culture in the club and wanting to dance more in the club. why beyonce and drake made the albums they made they know whats coming.

 

[IllmaticDelta]

28.4% midway through last year to 27.64% this year is technically a slippage but overall I would say no. One look at the market shares compared to the other "genres" shows you nothing else is remotely close.

R&B/Hip-Hop Remains On Top

R&B/hip-hop may be growing slower percentage-wise than the other two top leading genres (up 6.3% compared to rock at 7.3% and Pop at 8.3%) but it still outgrew every other genre in raw numbers year over year, meaning that even though its share of the overall market dropped from 28.4% midway through last year to 27.64% at the halfway point this year, it’s actually widened its lead at the top in terms of overall equivalent album units. It’s the only genre to have passed 100 million equivalent album units so far this year, and at 131.4 million, it’s not close. And while its total on-demand streaming growth (up 6.2%) is lower than the rate of the market overall (11.6%), it is still far and away the industry leader in streams, accounting for 29.39% of all on-demand streams in the U.S. in the first half of 2022, even as its share of streams declined from a 30.87% mark last year — a figure that speaks more to explosive growth in other genres (and the statistical difficulty of maintaining growth percentages as volume increases) than any dip within the R&B/hip-hop world.

World Music, Latin Music Surge

World music (up 26.4%) and Latin both grew at a lightning-fast pace; Latin grew at such a rate (28.4%) that in absolute numbers only R&B/Hip-Hop grew more, edging out rock for second-biggest growth in raw units, up 6.6 million over the same period last year. It’s Latin’s second straight year of 20%-plus growth, taking it to 6.25% of the total market, up from 5.32% at this point last year; and world music’s second straight year of double-digit percentage growth, taking it to 2.2% of the market, up from 1.9% midway through 2021. (The “world music” classification is generally a catchall of non-Latin music genres that originated outside the contiguous United States, and includes K-Pop and Afrobeats, among others.) Though every measured core genre is up at least a little bit year-over-year, only Latin, world, children and new age are growing at a faster rate than the market overall (9.3%) — and the top four genres all dropped in percentage of the overall market.

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HipHop & R&B = 27.64% market share

Latin Music = 6.25 market share

World Music (this includes Afrobeats and K-Pop) = 2.2 market share


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Top 4 in the USA

Growth Rankings

The top five genres in the U.S. have remained steady for several years now, and reflect the overall volume of listening nationally: R&B/hip-hop, rock, pop, country and Latin, in that order. But looking at the genres ranked by unit growth over the past year shakes up the rankings: R&B/hip-hop is still the leader in growth, accounting for 19.43% of the bump in the market over the midpoint of 2021, while rock and Pop slot in at Nos. 3 and 4. Latin jumps to No. 2, while world music, at No. 7 overall, leaps to No. 5, outpacing country and dance/electronic (the latter is no. 6 overall). Collectively, those top five genres — R&B/hip-hop, Latin, rock, pop and world music — account for 68.78% of the growth overall in the first six months of 2022.

Mid-Year 2022: Hip-Hop’s Still the Top Genre But Latin & World Music Are Making Gains

"Encanto," Bad Bunny and K-Pop fueled surges for different genres, though the established order remains in place.

www.power991fm.com

here is the pdf

https://www.billboard.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/july-19-2022-billboard-bulletin-1.pdf

 

[Mr Clean]

Why'd they inject Post Malone in there when the trio has been Drake, Cole and Kendrick for the last 10 years?

 

[TripleAgent]

Why'd they inject Post Malone in there when the trio has been Drake, Cole and Kendrick for the last 10 years?

 

[Ol’Otis]

It’s boring and redundant

 

[IllmaticDelta]

Drake the top streaming artist for the year, 2pac number 65.

www.thecoli.com

^thread was made the other day on the Top 100 streamed acts of/for this year. It's pretty much dominated by HipHop & R&B

 

[T.H.E. Goat]

Cacs thought Jack Harlow was gonna take over but since he didn’t now it’s hip hop dominance is slipping

 

[banner34]

Drake the top streaming artist for the year, 2pac number 65.

www.thecoli.com

^thread was made the other day on the Top 100 streamed acts of/for this year. It's pretty much dominated by HipHop & R&B

Drake has had the greatest run ever in hip hop.

 

[Pop123]

Drake has had the greatest run ever in hip hop.

Because the streams make him seem bigger than what he is, imo...and streams are real fishy and iffy so it's a lightweight asterisk next to his name...next to the asterisk that was already there for using writers. Does he sell Eminem/50 Cent/Nelly kind of albums really? I mean 50 was selling like 8 million in the states, another 5 overseas. Eminem was selling like 20 million. Nelly did like 8. I think Drake is just a consistently, kinda sorta close to double platinum, artist...just looking at the actual sales. And this is no hate, I fux with Drake when he's not rapping, lol...I like R&B/melodic Drake shyt. And, all that said...streams and everything included, you may be right, no one's had this consistency.

 

[Playaz Eyez]

NBA Youngboy, Rod Wave, and SuicideBoys