No Rap Songs Are in the Billboard Hot 100’s Top 40 for the First Time Since 1990

[VegetasHairline]

UMG put their money behind the wrong guy ..had 1 hot year and killed the culture and profitiability of hip hop

 

[Bigblackted4]

pop smoke xxx juice were all genuine stars. they all died that was the last wave of stars

Bingo

 

[bigde09]

Drake like Kanye really lost that “hit” factor that made them so popular. Once you get a stink of failure on you it’s hard to reverse public perception, especially without label backing.

Cardi put out her album and her biggest hits were years old already. No one is dropping big hit songs anymore. We didn’t even have a song of the summer this year.

Music is in a dire place, it’s lost it’s valued

Entertainment in general is in a dire place. Look at Hollywood

 

[L. Deezy]

People just comfortable listening to old shyt and more underground shyt. Radio is dead

Every album I liked this year were not big releases.. thank you Mass Appeal

 

[Gizmo_Duck]

People just comfortable listening to old shyt

I am here

 

[Renegade47]

Only took 10 years for your prediction to come to fruition

no it was done at that point but the machine kept the illusion up and twisted the toothpaste tube to squeeze the last bit out.

not my fault nikkas are retarded and cant see what really be going on.

 

[jwinfield]

 

[L $ C]

Its hard to say drake is struggling when he isnt really releasing shyt. All this weird ass promo nikkas do rather than just drop projects + videos has made it where nobody cares anymore. Like in the past you could say musicians had seasons where they drop + tour then take a 1-2 year break and repeat, but these dudes have the whole “on peasents i dont care about music so whem i drop you are blesses to sniff my ass” and at this rate folks like ok i dont care anymore

ima drake stan bro...if someone was gonna cut him slack it was gonna be me ...SSSFY was sucesfful and spawned a big hit but these last few months been rough, him and cole have also really hurt themselves by the fact theyve stopped doing features...it feels like everyone is just at a standstill

 

[Capital Steez]

This was the secret goal as the industry was pushing Dochii, Killer Mike, and Clipse on a mainstream level.

Of course the backpackers and ”cultural gatekeepers” were happy to be pandered too, without realizing that the goal behind the push was nuke rap’s viability to younger audiences.

Now we’re in a reality where K-Pop Demon Hunters had a larger cultural impact in Summer ‘25 than rap / hip-hop as a whole.

 

[Capital Steez]

Quality aside, demo shifts are probably the biggest reason why rap is flopping right now. Spotify users have abandoned rap and all Amazon music users listen to is country and pop music. That's 2 of the 3 biggest streaming services in the US

All rap has is Apple Music. nikkas like Rod Wave and YB dominate AM but are invisible on Spotify and Amazon. If they could replicate even half of their AM performance on Spotify and Amazon, their songs would be in the top 10 right now

Good take, algorithms and playlisting dictate such a large piece of the pie these days. All the more important to ensure folks understand and are tapped in at these tech companies and streaming platforms.

 

[☑︎#VoteDemocrat]

 

[bl2k8]

This was the secret goal as the industry was pushing Dochii, Killer Mike, and Clipse on a mainstream level.

Of course the backpackers and ”cultural gatekeepers” were happy to be pandered too, without realizing that the goal behind the push was nuke rap’s viability to younger audiences.

Now we’re in a reality where K-Pop Demon Hunters had a larger cultural impact in Summer ‘25 than rap / hip-hop as a whole.

I call BS on this. Rap songs are multiple national commercial's and in sports promos in all 3 major sports leagues. There has never been this much rap on tv in the history of the genre. The real issues there’s just not a lot of commercially appealing new rap songs anymore.

If you woulda told me snap ya fingers would be used in a damn Kia commercial 20 years ago or I got 5 on it for a major movie I would have never believed it

 

[tysigna]

People still ain't reading a post...this has nothing to do with how well hip hop performs on the charts


"Recent rule changes to Billboard’s Hot 100 methodology did play a part in the streak coming to an end. For the chart dated Oct. 25, descending songs were deemed recurrent and removed from the chart if they had exceeded certain durations on the chart"

Billboard hot 100' top 40 is now exclusively for brand new songs.

https://www.npr.org/2025/10/22/g-s1-94489/billboard-hot-100-chart-changes-songs

"Billboard has revised its system of removing songs from the Hot 100 singles chart once they've gotten too old to qualify as contemporary hits."

"The powerful change is designed to end the long reign of older smashes"

 

[Metal Face]

 

[Wepa Man]