(June 16, 2023). This is likely not how hip-hop expected it would be commemorating its 50th anniversary.
As Morgan Wallen and K-pop (and Taylor Swift and SZA) continue their dominion over Billboard’s national charts, the shutout of hip-hop from No. 1 on both the Hot 100 and the Billboard 200 continues and is approaching historic territory…like of the 30-years-ago variety.
On the Billboard 200, which measures U.S. consumption of albums (streaming, digital, vinyl, CDs and cassettes combined), no hip-hop album has reached No. 1 in 2023, through the latest chart dated June 17.
That makes it exactly six months since the last such album topped the list (Metro Boomin’s HEROES & VILLIANS on the album chart dated December 17, 2022).
The current six-month drought for hip-hop is the longest at the top of the Billboard 200 since the half-year gap between the No. 1 crownings of Jay-Z’s The Blueprint 3 (September 26, 2009) and Ludacris’ Battle of the Sexes (March 27, 2010)…or more than 13 years ago!
Furthermore, the last year that we went this deep into the calendar before seeing hip-hop’s first No. 1 album was in 1994 when Beastie Boys’ Ill Communication became that year’s first No. 1 rap LP on the chart dated June 18.
And given that no major hip-hop albums are expected until the year’s most anticipated so far—Travis Scott’s Utopia (due Friday, June 23 and eligible to debut on the chart dated July 8)—it will have been 30 years since hip-hop’s first No. 1 of the year occurred on July 8 or later (assuming Scott’s album even gets there, more on that below).
In 1993, it was August 7 before legendary California trio Cypress Hill gave rap its first No. 1 of the year with the LP Black Sunday. And that was at a time when hip-hop’s mainstream presence was still developing. Prior to Cypress Hill’s Black Sunday, there had only been seven No. 1 albums in hip-hop’s entire then-20-year existence.
In the 30 years since Cypress Hill’s reign, there have been 242 more No. 1 rap or hip-hop albums, including 78 in the five-year period from 2017-21 (with a record-setting 18 in 2018 alone), for a current total of 250.
Data: See this exclusive djrobblog list of every hip-hop album to reach No. 1 on the Billboard 200.
There have only been 10 “true” No. 1 hip-hop albums on the main Billboard chart since the beginning of 2022, with all of those occurring last year.
But albums aren’t alone in their recent chart misery. Over on the Hot 100–the industry’s most authoritative, all-inclusive singles chart—the story isn’t any better for individual hip-hop songs.
In fact, it’s even worse.
The last time a rap song topped that chart was when Nicki Minaj led the rankings with “Super Freaky Girl” on August 27, 2022–or just under nine months and three weeks ago.
That drought is the longest the Hot 100 has seen since the nine months and three weeks between the last frame of Wiz Khalifa’s No. 1 run with “See You Again” (featuring Charlie Puth) in July 2015, and May 2016 when Desiigner’s “Panda” first topped the list.
Similarly, the last time the singles chart went this deep into the year before seeing its first No. 1 hip-hop hit was a year when there were none: 2000.
From January 1, 2000, to December 31 that year, there were no songs by rappers that reached No. 1 on the Hot 100.
That year fell within an 18-month gap between rap No. 1s on the Hot 100 (from Will Smith’s “Wild Wild West” in July 1999 to Shaggy ft. RikRok Ducent’s “It Wasn’t Me” in February 2001).
If you include reggae-fusion hip-hop songs by artists like Shaggy above plus Snow (“Informer,” 1993) and Ini Kamoze (“Here Comes The Hotstepper,” ‘94), the year 2000 is the only one since 1989 that there wasn’t at least one hip-hop song that topped the Hot 100.
That’s 1989…the year that Tone Loc was the hottest mainstream rapper around and before MC Hammer and Vanilla ice became household names with their mega-selling 1990 albums Please Hammer Don’t Hurt ‘Em and To The Extreme, respectively.
At the current rate, 2023 is on track to join 2000 in that dubious category, a significant development if it were to happen and one that the hip-hop industry would no doubt like to avoid given the amount of focus on the genre during this historic 50th anniversary year.
Related: What’s causing hip-hop chart-topping decline in 2023?
Back to the albums list, there’s likely a lot riding on the success of Travis Scott’s upcoming Utopia, particularly because it’s the first release by the “Sicko Mode” rapper since his July 2021 Astroworld festival where a stampede killed ten fans and injured more than a hundred others.
The resultant lawsuits and backlash against Scott were enough to cause him to shelve a then-planned release called Dystopia.
Though nearly two years have passed, the so-called “cancel culture” seems to affect hip-hop artists much deeper and longer than their non-rap counterparts (see country music’s Morgan Wallen for the best example).
Speaking of Wallen, it appears that he poses the greatest challenge to Scott bringing rap back to the top of the Billboard 200. The country superstar’s One Thing At A Time has already prevented at least two rap albums (plus many from other genres) from reaching No. 1 this year, and it has been at No. 1 or 2 for all fourteen of its chart weeks (through June 17). The blockbuster album has sold more than 100,000 units in every one of those weeks since its release.
And while Wallen has hovered at the low end of that 100,000-unit threshold in recent weeks, there’s no guarantee that Scott will eclipse it given the recent backlash against the rapper.
But, regardless of what Travis Scott does with Utopia, there are still six months left in 2023 and anything could happen as other hip-hop superstars gear up for releases later in the year.
This blogger believes that hip-hop will pull out of its current chart doldrums and regain its No. 1 status before the year is out.
Still, no one could have imagined that the much-hyped genre would have such a hard time generating the kind of numbers it has in recent years, or that it would be approaching a chart-topping void it has only seen once since the days of parachute pants and the first wop dance!
Especially during this…it’s golden anniversary year.
DJRob
DJRob (he/him/his), who longs for the days when hip-hop had more (positive) variety, 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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