Hip-Hop’s Unexpected Turn: Is rap losing its mojo in 2023?  Here are the bleak numbers (including a first since 2012)…

(April 07, 2023).  This may be hip-hop’s 50th anniversary year, but there’s very little to celebrate so far in 2023 about album consumption and Billboard chart numbers when it comes to rappers. 

While the first quarter of any year is usually pretty tepid in terms of new album releases or meaningful sales numbers from major artists (unless your name happens to be country music’s Morgan Wallen), the data from the first three months of 2023 is particularly unsettling for hip-hop.

So far this year, through the latest chart dated April 8, zero albums by rappers have topped the Billboard 200–the ranking that tracks sales, streaming and digital consumption of all commercial EP, LP and mixtape releases here in the U.S.

Now, it’s only April and the year is still young, but the last time the first quarter of any year went by without a No. 1 album from a hip-hop artist was back in 2012(!).

That was when Nicki Minaj ended a four-month-and-two-week drought with Pink Friday: Roman Reloaded (on the chart dated April 21, 2012).  The last No. 1 album by a rapper prior to Nicki’s reign had been Drake’s Take Care (Dec. 3, 2011).

Before then, only three other first-quarter shutouts happened this century: in ‘01, ‘02 and ‘09.

As hip-hop was still expanding in the ‘90s, this first-quarter absence occurred with more regularity—happening each year from 1990-95, plus 1998–with rap not yet having established its current foothold on music’s mainstream. 

The very first No. 1 album by a rap act was in March 1987 (Beastie Boys’ License To Ill).  Afterwards, the next two years—1988 and ‘89–also experienced this first-quarter hip-hop void.

But times are far different from what they were during hip-hop’s developmental years.  Rap music saw significant growth during the 2010s thanks mainly to streaming’s popularity, plus the emergence of southern hip-hop’s music capital in Atlanta and different ways of breaking new artists through social media platforms like SoundCloud and TikTok.

For the past six years hip-hop has been the dominant form of music, beating all other genres in terms of annual consumption numbers and percentage market share (based on revenue).  

This correlated with the Billboard charts where as many as 18 albums by rappers reached No. 1 in 2018 alone—a single-year record—with a total of 78 such albums topping the chart from Jan. 2017 – Dec. 2021, or an average of nearly 16 per year.

But things have clearly cooled since the beginning of 2022.  Only 12 albums by rappers—with only ten of those truly qualifying as rap—have topped the Billboard 200 chart in the past 16 months (all occurring last year).

The current drought dates back to December 17, 2022, when Metro Boomin’s HEROES & VILLIANS reached No. 1.

Since then, no rap album has ranked higher than No. 3 on the weekly rankings (Trippie Redd’s Mansion Musk reached that position on the Billboard ranking dated Feb. 4).

What’s more, only three other rap albums released in 2023 have even reached the top ten: Yeat’s AfterLyfe (No. 4; March 11); Don Toliver’s Love Sick (No. 8; also March 11); and Youngboy Never Broke Again’s I Rest My Case (No. 9; Jan. 21).

A fifth rapper, Lil Yachty, entered the top ten (No. 9) in February with his latest release, Let’s Start Here, but that album was a complete departure from hip-hop as the versatile Atlanta artist experimented with the psychedelic rock/soul genre—think early Funkadelic meets Pink Floyd—and denounced his previous mumble-rap persona in the process (a good decision for him, btw!). 

Otherwise, hip-hop has been represented in the top ten by a few holdovers from 2022 like Drake & 21 Savage’s Her Loss, Lil Baby’s It’s Only Me, and Metro Boomin’s album, which happens to be the only rap set in the current week’s top ten. 

And the highest weekly sales/consumption number for a hip-hop album so far in 2023?  

That would be Trippie Redd’s 56,000 units for Mansion Musik.  By comparison, country singer Morgan Wallen’s One Thing At A Time album debuted in March with more than 500,000 equivalent album units moved during its first week…a more than 9-to-1 ratio.

The average first-week numbers for those 18 No. 1 chart-toppers in 2018 was 279,000 album equivalent units sold.  And those 18 albums made up nearly 44 percent of the total number of No. 1 albums that year (41).

So what gives for this once unstoppable genre, and should the industry be concerned? 

It would be easy to write off this latest blip as a statistical anomaly, especially given rap’s trademark resiliency and its status in 2022 as the number-one consumed genre for the sixth year running.  

But hip-hop’s diminishing unit share of No. 1 albums continues a slide that’s been in place for more than five years. 

As mentioned earlier, 18 different albums by hip-hop artists ascended to No. 1 on the Billboard 200 in 2018.  In 2019, that number dipped to 17.  

In 2020, the number dropped to 16 No. 1 hip-hop albums.  In 2021, the total fell to 15, and last year, again as mentioned earlier, only 12 albums by rappers reached the pinnacle.

And that last figure generously includes albums by Drake, who took a house music turn with However, Nevermind, and Bad Bunny, the Puerto Rican superstar who raps and sings to Latin beats that are not traditionally hip-hop.  Subtract both his blockbuster set, Un Verano Sin Ti, and Drake’s house music experiment from these statistics, and only ten albums that truly qualified as rap topped the weekly charts last year.  

While these numbers and trends may appear trivial to the casual observer or even to the hip-hop faithful, they are an important indicator for the genre, particularly since chart placement indicates not only how rap is doing with respect to other music types, but also how rappers are doing relative to other rappers.

Hip-hop acts have regularly and historically used hitting No. 1 in Billboard as a sign of their arrival, or a measuring stick of their continued dominion over other rappers.  It’s just one more thing that gives them bragging rights, which has always been a big part of rap culture.  

Artists have for decades rapped about hitting No. 1, tweeted about it, and even protested when it didn’t happen.

For example, Nicki Minaj, the artist who ended the previous longest hip-hop drought eleven years ago, threatened to retire from music altogether seven years later when a subsequent album, 2018’s Queen, debuted and peaked at No. 2.  It had followed a previous release, The Pinkprint, which also couldn’t get past the runner-up spot in 2014.  

In the wake of Minaj’s second-place showing in 2018, rap’s then-leading lady famously protested the marketing tactics used to keep fellow rapper Travis Scott’s Astroworld at No. 1 for a second week, which had prevented Queen from topping the list.

Partially staying true to her retirement vow, Minaj has yet to release a followup album to Queen.

Similarly, Cardi B hasn’t issued a followup to her 2018 full-length LP Invasion of Privacy, which was the last set by a female rapper to hit No. 1 in April 2018 (and the only one to do so since Minaj’s Roman Reloaded in 2012).

Both Minaj and Cardi B have released several singles in the past five years, with multiple No. 1 songs between them in that span, so their reluctance to release full-length albums has been frustrating for their fans, to say the least.

While those two superstars have had big singles success, other rappers have shown that having No. 1 songs doesn’t always translate to getting chart-topping albums, particularly when it comes to women.  

Femcees like Megan Thee Stallion, Saweetie, and Doja Cat have all reached the top five—but not No. 1– with recent albums, despite both Megan and Doja having had No. 1 singles on the Billboard Hot 100. 

Not surprisingly, the men have done better, especially big names like Drake (five No. 1 albums since April 2018); YoungBoy Never Broke Again (four in that span); Kanye West, Future, 21 Savage, Gunna, Young Thug, Metro Boomin, and Lil Baby (three each in the past five years).

But all of those are big-name rappers, veteran artists who in the recent past were practically guaranteed a No. 1 debut with each new release.

A growing issue is that even some veterans, for a variety of reasons, are starting to show signs of a slowdown in 2023.  And there isn’t a crop of budding new superstars coming up behind them to keep hip-hop fresh and exciting (and the consumption numbers high).

Of the five albums by rappers—all veterans—that have reached the top ten so far this year, including Yachty’s Let’s Start Here (but not including the holdovers from 2022), all five represent first-week sales declines or lower chart peaks (or both) from the artist’s immediate prior albums or from their career highs.

Several other big name rappers have had poor performing albums in recent years, or they’ve simply held off from releasing new product in the wake of highly publicized controversies.

For example, Meek Mill, Rick Ross and Eminem—once reliable chart toppers—have had disappointing showings with their latest sets.  

Meek Mill’s 2021 release Expensive Pain, topped out at No. 3, Rozay’s Richer Than I Ever Been didn’t break the chart bank (No. 22 peak in late 2021), and Eminem’s most recent greatest hits set, Curtain Call 2, debuted and peaked at a disappointing No. 6 last year with only 43,000 units moved in its first week.

By comparison, Em’s first Curtain Call greatest hits package debuted at No. 1 in 2005 with 441,000 units, more than ten times the latest album’s count (it’s noted that the 2005 figure is a pure album sales number, while all figures since 2014 factor in those sales, plus conversions of both digital downloads and streaming to album equivalent units).

From the crop of more recent superstars, Charlotte, NC-based rapper DaBaby—once the hottest new artist in the game—had two No. 1 albums in 2019 and ‘20 (Kirk and Blame it on Baby, respectively).

His 2022 followup, Baby on Baby 2, entered and peaked on the Billboard chart at a very disappointing No. 34 after moving just 17,000 units, clearly the result of a backlash the controversial rapper received after being videoed making homophobic comments to his audience during a Rolling Loud performance in July 2021.

Another superstar hurt by recent controversy is Travis Scott, whose planned 2021 project Dystopia was shelved in the wake of the stampede at his Astroworld Festival in Houston that killed ten people and injured hundreds of others.  Astroworld, released in 2018, is Scott’s last full-length album release (although a highly anticipated new set, Utopia, has been announced for June 2023).

The industry is placing high stakes on Utopia, just as it is for other new projects rumored to be in the works for chart-topping mainstays like Drake and Lil Baby (in a collaboration), J. Cole, and the aforementioned Cardi B, and Nicki Minaj.

Still, with the once solid veneer of veteran rappers starting to show signs of cracking, it begs the following question…

Where are hip-hop’s new superstars?

Hip-hip has always been about what’s new and fresh.  But new artists aren’t breaking into the mainstream at the rate they were in past decades, and this lack of succession is showing up at the top of the charts.

In the two years between April 15, 2021 and today, only five rappers achieved their first No. 1 albums on the Billboard 200: Moneybagg Yo, Lil Durk, Polo G, the Kid Laroi, and Pusha T. 

And Pusha T, the only rapper in 2022 to get his first No. 1, is a nearly 30-year veteran who will be 46 next month.

The other 20 No. 1 albums in the most recent two-year window were by rap acts achieving their second (or more) chart-toppers.

By contrast, in each of the two-year periods from mid-April 2017 to mid-April 2019, and from mid-April 2019 to mid-April 2021, there were fourteen rap acts achieving their very first No. 1 albums (see table below).

That’s 28 No. 1 albums (out of 60 total between April ‘17 and April ‘21) by hip-hop artists achieving their first topper during that window—or a rate of 47%—compared to the 20% (5 of 25) of No. 1 rap artists crowned for the first time in the last two years.

Those numbers don’t bode well for a music genre that prides itself in constantly breaking the hottest new trends and catering to a young fan base. These are indeed humbling times for a seemingly indestructible genre that now appears to be grappling with an identity crisis as it struggles to navigate a changing musical landscape.

To rap or not to rap

Not helping matters is the fact that several veteran rappers are beginning to break from the genre—temporarily or otherwise—with albums that have all but abandoned hip-hop.

Already mentioned was Lil Yachty’s latest, Let’s Start Here, which ventured into psychedelic rock and even topped Billboard’s rock album charts upon its debut in February.  The album’s release came with the artist issuing a pretty strong dismissal of the “mumble rap” albums for which he was previously known: “F-ck any of the albums I dropped before this one.”

Drake’s 2022 house music album, However, Nevermind, also caused a stir from critics, although the Canadian superstar has since recovered some rap cred with the purely hip-hop Her Loss collabo (with 21 Savage). On Friday (April 7), Drizzy released yet another new single, “Search and Rescue,” which could be previewing a new album to be released sooner than later.

Yachty and Drake are not the only big-name rappers to break from hip-hop in recent years.  Both Post Malone and Machine Gun Kelly, each of whom are Billboard No. 1 veterans, have all but permanently removed themselves from the genre.

Other factors seem to be chipping away at hip-hop’s empire as well.

Artists increasingly are more willing to test the waters with singles than diving in fully with a new album (although rapper YoungBoy Never Broke Again is a clear exception with multiple new albums in the past year alone, all of which have reached the top ten).

And not to pick on Nicki Minaj again, but her latest single, “Red Ruby (Da Sleeze)” debuted on the Hot 100 at a modest No. 13 in March and promptly fell to No. 37 the following week, not long after the superstar had quickly disassociated the song from her yet-to-be-released new album, essentially calling “Sleeze” a one-off anomaly.  It remains to be seen whether last year’s No. 1 single, “Super Freaky Girl,” will be included in a new album should one be released. 

Also, in what is clearly a TikTok-driven market, the popular video-sharing app may now be a double-edged sword when it comes to new artists, including rappers.  

Yes, TikTok can break new acts the instant a user-generated video tied to their song goes viral, but the association is usually with the song, not the artist, which lends itself to the current singles-driven market and more one-hit wonders (the current call for banning TikTok by congressional leaders may change that).

And finally there’s hip-hop’s image problem.  

With the highly violent and nihilistic “drill rap” representing one of hip-hop’s most popular scenes in recent years, the harsh sub-genre has yet to experience the kind of mainstream breakthrough that “safer” categories have in past decades.   

That coupled with the number of young rappers perishing to gun violence over the past decade, the recent beatdown of mercurial rapper 6ix9ine in a gym bathroom, plus the aforementioned scandals involving big names like DaBaby, Travis Scott, and now GloRilla (a stampede following a recent concert of hers resulted in three deaths), and hip-hop continues to have a significant image problem to overcome.

Even overt attempts to further mainstream the culture have been met with high resistance.  

McDonald’s recent Valentine’s Day marketing tie-in with married rappers Cardi B and Offset was met with significant pushback from franchise owners, some of whom refused to promote the package.  

And Lil Baby’s performance at the recent Kid’s Choice Awards received significant criticism due to his “image,” despite efforts to cleanup his act and make it kid-friendly.

Whatever the reason for the current downturn, it’s clear that hip-hop is losing some of its edge and that rap’s folly may finally be catching up to it.

It is way too early—and quite frankly foolish—to count hip-hop out.  It has proven to be the most resilient of music genres for its entire 50-year history. 

But the recent disappointing numbers—and the potential reasons behind them—should at least give pause to an industry that has never been known to rest on its early victories.

DJRob

DJRob (he/him/his), hip-hop album stat tracker, is a freelance music blogger from somewhere on the East Coast who covers R&B, hip-hop, pop and rock genres – plus lots of music news and current stuff!  You can follow him on Twitter at @djrobblog.

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