Hip-hop was born as an inherently outsider form. It’s functioning exactly as it’s supposed to.
Photo by @imrichporter
During the week of October 25 through November 1, for the first time in 35 years, no rap songs appeared on Billboard’s top 40. For many, it signaled the death knell of hip-hop’s slow, but imminent, decline.
According to Billboard, the reason was, in part, due to a new rule change effected for its 2026 chart year, which forces out songs that have spent 26 weeks on the chart and fall below No. 25. But rap wasn’t exactly thriving before that. Only one song, Kendrick Lamar and SZA’s “luther,” stood in the way of its disappearance. Billboard reported that hip-hop has been experiencing a “dip in commercial dominance” for years – its market share reaching a peak of 30% in 2020, and staying stagnant at 24% for all of 2025 so far. Rap, as some would have it, has transformed into a ghost of its formerly mass-marketable self.
But I would argue that this “dip” is actually a good thing.
It’s worth interrogating what metrics we’re using to measure commercial dominance. In 2025, one of the most successful tours belonged to rapper NBA YoungBoy, who wrapped up his first-ever headlining run with 42 sold-out arena shows throughout the U.S., allegedly grossing over $70 million. In 2024, that would’ve put him in the top 50 highest grossing tours, all without ever having a solo entry crack Billboard’s top 20. In a piece for the New Yorker, critic Kelefa Sanneh wrote that the NBA YoungBoy phenomenon — a rapper who’s experiencing such strong cult success while seemingly evading the mainstream — shows that hip-hop “still hasn’t been fully digested.” That the fifty-one year old genre still has insights, innovations, and worlds contained within to offer. And he’s right.
The present splintering between mainstream and community tastes in hip-hop shows that the genre is still radical, cool, and inventive enough to escape the simple palates of mainstream consumers. That such a powerful cultural force has not yet been diluted and bastardized by industry sways like “chart dominance” and “market share” should be a sign of hope.
The origins of hip-hop came from that tension between what the mainstream likes and understands, and what the community seems to intuitively get. Elusiveness is a quality essential to hip-hop’s power. In the midst of increasing urban decay in the 70s and 80s, white people fled en masse from the Bronx. The low-income and racially marginalized community that remained was neglected and abused by the city. In response to this and the massive popularity of disco at the time, the rebellious form was born. Block parties, like the one held on August 11, 1973, that’s widely accepted to have been the official kickstarter of hip-hop, became an incubator for its maturation. And by virtue of the fact that they took place in the Bronx, they alienated those who could not or would not get it. Naturally, too, then, the genre was largely ignored, seen as a fad.
It wouldn’t be until the 1980s, when gangsta rap – with its distinct bluntness and provocation – shocked and entranced the nation into listening, did the music truly begin to be taken seriously by the masses. And even then, it eluded in a different way. N.W.A.’s “Straight Outta Compton” famously garnered a letter from the FBI. The Parental Advisory Explicit Content sticker became a weapon against Black musical expression. And then-president George H.W. Bush even publicly bashed Ice T’s “Cop Killer”.
Forty years later, to read what happened to hip-hop on the Billboard charts as anything other than the natural progression of an inherently outsider form is to fundamentally misunderstand hip-hop. It’s functioning exactly as it’s supposed to.
There must be a culture surrounding the music, that rubs up blazingly against the backs of anyone outside of it, for potency to be produced. That doesn’t necessarily make the music good off principle, but it sure as hell makes it hip-hop. That blaze can still be felt now, Billboard charts be damned.
Rap’s current “underground” — comprising rappers like Nettspend, Fakemink, Osamason, or Nine Vicious — is continuously being reshaped and kept alive almost strictly through the Internet. Due to the lack of geographical limitations, there is a thrilling and freeing lack of musical or stylistic limitations. You get music like the low-key but slightly off-kilter “Werkin” or “Hi, I’m blessed,” which, following in the lineage of rap, alienates anyone not willing to match its abrasiveness.
In 2024 when hip-hop had only a 25% market share, per Billboard, a young rapper from my hometown of Atlanta, Baby Kia, began making waves. At the time, all the online discourse surrounding his music was either negative, or taking it as a joke. But every morning, when I’d go to my metro-Atlanta high school, I’d see a group of my classmates — all young Black men — congregated around a janky Bluetooth speaker in a corner of the classroom listening to music from him and other artists of that scene: L5, BabyDrill, or Ola Runt.
My peers were taking that music seriously, in spite of whatever anyone outside of their figurative, or literal, circle had to say about it. It moved them. Therein lies the power of hip-hop. Its absence from the top 40 is, at worst, a non-issue, and, at best, a call for jubilation.
See The FADER’s list of the best rap songs of November 2025.