Rap Artists Haven’t Topped the Charts This Year. Does It Really Matter?
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On Tuesday, Billboard published a piece speculating on why hip-hop hasn’t had a Number One album or single within the first half of 2023. The report set off a flurry of chatter from industry observers and rap fans drawing their own conclusions as to what the answer might be. Is the dearth of rap hits this year a matter of market share, artist deaths, incarceration, or stagnant charts?
Most people who think the occurrence is no big deal are chalking it up to a lack of releases by major rap stars. Consider this small sample of chart-topping stalwarts who haven’t released an album this year: Kendrick Lamar, Drake, J. Cole, Lil Uzi Vert, Playboi Carti, Lil Baby, Future, Eminem, Cardi B, Megan Thee Stallion, Nicki Minaj, and Tyler, the Creator. In effect, there’s a sect of onlookers viewing this circumstance akin to a baseball lineup where the heart of the order hasn’t stepped up to bat. In their eyes, it’s only an issue if we get albums from genuine rap superstars and still don’t have a Number One.
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But there are others noting that the lineup would be a lot deeper if not for the rap community’s unfortunate losses. Pop Smoke has the ghastly distinction of having released a posthumous debut album with Shoot for the Stars, Land on the Moon, which demonstrated that he had the charisma and skill set to evolve beyond the New York drill scene in a manner similar to Ice Spice. Juice WRLD’s Race for Love debuted at Number One in 2019, nine months before his tragic death. XXXTentacion was one of the most polarizing artists of the 2010s, but 17 and ?, two albums released before his June 2018 death, went to Number Two and Number One on the chart, respectively. Mac Miller had a Number One album with 2011’s Blue Slide Park and had grown infinitely as an artist up to the point of his tragic death in September 2018. A scene can’t keep losing brilliantly talented twentysomethings and think there will be no communal effect. Consider the shadow that would be cast over a sports league if — God forbid — it lost a handful of its most promising players in less than a decade.
The YSL RICO case has also hindered two artists who could’ve made a mark on the charts this year. Young Thug had two straight Billboard 200 toppers with So Much Fun and Punk before he was ensnared in the sprawling indictment last May. Gunna was primed for the best year of his career with “Pushin P” and his DS4EVA album both topping the charts last year, but now his reputation is marred with fans who are upset he took an Alford plea in the YSL case. Time will tell how his just-released A Gift & a Curse album will perform.
And then there are popular artists who’ve alienated themselves with their actions. DaBaby was already facing criticism for a stagnant sound in 2020, but he cemented his commercial decline with homophobic comments at Rolling Loud Miami 2021 that he waited too long to apologize for. He’s never reached the same commercial heights. Kodak Black, NBA Youngboy, and Lil Uzi Vert have all released albums and singles this year but aren’t breaking through with fans who don’t want to support artists accused of abuse.
Beyond the gloomier aspects of rap fandom, others have fixated on the general stagnation of the Billboard Hot 100 chart in 2023. There have only been five singles to top the Billboard Hot 100 all year: The Weeknd and Ariana Grande’s “Die With You,” Jimin’s “Like Crazy,” and SZA’s “Kill Bill,” as well as Miley Cyrus’ “Flowers” and Morgan Wallen’s “Last Night.” The last two songs alone have collectively taken four of the six months. There have been rap songs that have reached the Top Five of the Hot 100, including Lil Durk and J. Cole’s “All My Life,” Drake’s “Search and Rescue,” and Ice Spice’s “Princess Diana,” but none of those have been able to supplant Cyrus’ and Wallen’s dominance.
There are others who couldn’t care less about any of the industrial permutations chart performance indicates. We can endlessly speculate why there hasn’t been a Number One rap single this year, or we could ask the more pressing question: Do rap artists’ absence from the charts actually matter? Does anyone need to clamor to go somewhere Wallen has been? The music industry has been exposed for numerous underhanded ploys for chart-topping over the years: merch bundles, YouTube clips that looped hooks, and other schemes yet to be discovered. Streaming farms are so recognized that J. Cole rapped about them on the 21 Savage track “A Lot,” where he pointedly asks, “How many faking they streams?/Getting they plays from machines?” The charts have long been a charade where labels make themselves feel better about the bankability of their big-money investments by investing more money into the illusion of dominance.
There are rap albums like Navy Blue’s Ways of Knowing, Danny Brown and Jpegmafia’s Scaring the Hoes, or billy woods and Kenny Segal’s Maps that won’t sniff the top of the charts (through no fault of theirs), yet are more compelling than most albums that bested them. Rap has permeated pop music so deeply that the remnants of rap’s DNA are apparent even without explicit reputation. In a manner similar to the Grammys, the Billboard conversation is a consequence of rap’s industrial assimilation: We clamor and stew over dignifications that don’t even cover enough of hip-hop’s vastness to be legitimate indicators of success. Topping the charts isn’t about a song’s mass appeal as much as it is about a corporation’s ability to engineer the optic of consumption. Perhaps it’s poetic that this is occurring alongside hip-hop’s 50th birthday. The rap gods are calling on us to break free from the Matrix. After all, there was no way to counterfeit what went off at the park jam. Let’s keep that same energy in 2023 and beyond. Maybe we should be happy that we haven’t yet been force-fed any bland, generic singles optimized to placate flyover country.
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