Megan Thee Stallion may have rescued rap from a brief Top-40 blackout—but hip-hop’s troubles run deeper.
(November 7, 2025) – Billboard’s report that—for the first time in 35 years—no rap songs appeared in the Top 40 of the Hot 100 (for the weeks of October 25 and November 1) sent a shiver through hip-hop culture. Rap’s haters rejoiced; hip-hop loyalists cried foul, the latter group questioning Billboard as a true barometer for the genre’s health (though many clout-chasing rappers have shouted out the trade publication for decades).
Still, the numbers don’t lie. It had been 35 years, 8 months, and 4 weeks since the chart last went rap-less—back on February 3, 1990. (Although that Top 40 included Milli Vanilli’s “All or Nothing,” Billboard had declared the lip-syncing, pop-rapping duo weren’t a “real” rap act a year earlier—and that was before the scandal.)
But maybe the current charts tell more than a radio or consumer story. Maybe they’re reflecting something bigger—the sidelining of Black culture itself. In an era when statehouses are rewriting history books, HBCUs are under attack, school boards are voting Black history out of classrooms, and federal arts grants that once funded cultural programs are being cut or redirected, it’s not just rap that’s missing from the charts—it’s representation.
This week, the drought ended—technically—with Megan Thee Stallion’s “Lover Girl,” a raunchy ode to her current boo thang, NBA star Klay Thompson, debuting at No. 38. Like Taylor Swift and Cardi B before her, Megan turned a high-profile relationship into a chart storyline and scored a hit. But, in a fate that’s closer to Cardi’s than Taylor’s, “Lover Girl” will likely take a huge tumble out of the Top 40 next week. Even if it doesn’t, one single’s success can’t disguise a deeper rap slowdown.
How We Got Here: A 35-Year Streak Interrupted
One rung below the Top 40 on that February 1990 chart sat Biz Markie’s “Just a Friend,” which leapt to No. 29 the following week and ignited a streak that would soundtrack the comings of age of Generations X, Y, and Z. It would span six U.S. presidents (and three impeachments), the worst foreign attack on American soil in 9/11, three foreign wars, the birth of the Internet, the smartphone and social media, and America’s reckonings with #MeToo, BLM, and MAGA.
And that’s not to mention the genre’s survival of its own internal battles: the East-vs.-West feud that saw two of hip-hop’s greatest—Tupac and Biggie—murdered in their mid-20s; the Jay-Z-vs.-Nas lyrical war of the early 2000s; and the recent Kendrick vs. Drake diss battles of 2024–25 that shifted power from rap’s Canadian ambassador to the King of Compton—at least temporarily.
For 35 years, rap didn’t just mirror the culture—it defined it. It outlasted new jack swing, grunge, Lilith Fair, boy bands, crunk, EDM, and nearly every other fleeting pop trend. It was the most daring, dynamic, and disruptive sound America ever produced.
Rap even transcended music. It created moguls—Jay-Z, Kanye West, Diddy, Dr. Dre—who parlayed rhymes into billion-dollar empires. “Gangsta” rappers like Snoop Dogg and 50 Cent became household names long after their hit-making primes. Ice-T, a controversial hip-hop pioneer who never scored a Top 40 single, has now played a cop on TV’s longest-running crime drama for over two decades.
Meanwhile, Drake, the artist with more Hot 100 entries than anyone in any genre, turned hip-hop into a numbers game—helped no doubt by streaming’s algorithmic generosity. And the leading women—Nicki Minaj, Cardi B, Doja Cat, Megan Thee Stallion, and GloRilla—pushed the genre’s visibility higher than ever, following the path paved decades earlier by Queen Latifah, MC Lyte, Lil’ Kim, Foxy Brown, Eve, Trina, and Rock Hall inductee Missy Elliott.
Yet beneath all that success, the music feels weary now. The beats rarely stray from the same trap loops that have dominated for over a decade; the lyrics still orbit sex, drugs, and score-settling while the world outside has moved on. The only people who care whether Ice Spice has a beef to settle with Lotto are fans of Ice Spice and Lotto. Yes, beefs drive initial interest—as Megan’s “HISS” proved in 2024–but it doesn’t sustain it (as her historic descent also proved). The energy that once shocked mainstream America now feels predictable and unimaginative.
Cases in point: how many ways can Drake still milk his trademark paranoia, whether it be about his enemies or women? Or how many times can Megan and her femcee peers repackage the hypersexualized “baddest bitch” trope without it sounding stale?
A Genre Standing Still
Aside from melodic rapper-singer Rod Wave and Texas newcomer BigXThaPlug, few fresh voices have broken through since 2020. Several promising late-2010s names—Pop Smoke, Juice WRLD, XXXTentacion, and DaBaby—were lost to violence, tragedy, or self-sabotage. Others like Roddy Ricch, Young Thug, and Gunna have struggled to regain their footing amid legal troubles or dwindling relevance, their most recent albums all failing to match the success of earlier ones.
So far in 2025, only eight rap albums have topped the Billboard 200 chart. Without any major releases slated for the next six weeks, that number will likely hold. If it does, it would be the second time in three years that rap chart-toppers have failed to reach double digits. In 2023 there were only six No. 1 rap albums, a big drop from the record 18 that rang the No. 1 bell just five years earlier. Similarly, the Hot 100 sported 16 songs in the top 40 in October 2020, versus zero the past two weeks.
When rap has seen chart rebounds, they’ve been fleeting. 6ix9ine & Nicki Minaj’s “Trollz” and Megan’s “HISS” both debuted at No. 1, only to vanish within a month—two of the shortest-lived No. 1s in Hot 100 history.
Even success comes with caveats. Cardi B’s long-awaited sophomore album remains in the Billboard 200’s Top 10 six weeks after release, but none of its singles have cracked mainstream radio’s Top 40. Its highest Hot 100 entry, “Safe” featuring Kehlani, rests at No. 56—hardly a win. Meanwhile, NBA YoungBoy, the most prolific rapper of the streaming era, is this week’s second-highest rap charter at No. 48 (“Shot Callin”), but recurring show cancellations and controversy fatigue continue to overshadow his music.
For nearly two years, Kendrick Lamar has felt like hip-hop’s lone sustainable success—if not in chart numbers, then in cultural clout—largely due to the aftermath of his explosive feud with Drake, the once-untouchable hitmaker now reduced to more earthly numbers. Even that rivalry, initially billed as rap’s next civil war in an attempt to help many rappers cash in, ended up being more a spectacle between just K.Dot and Drizzy. When veterans like The Game, Rick Ross, and J. Cole tried to capitalize on the moment, their shots echoed embarrassingly in the wake of the battle’s two principals.
Missing the Moment
For decades, hip-hop was the mirror America didn’t want to look into—furious, funny, fearless. Now, in a time of growing protest and political distrust, it feels disconnected from the moment.
In a year when resistance to government overreach dominates headlines, rappers are still rapping about clout, cash, and chaos. Whether it’s NBA YoungBoy with his 35 albums since 2017 or Cardi B with just two, the subject matter seems the same—money, fashion, sex, and the excesses of fame—while average Americans are struggling to put food on the table in 2025.
Whether completely accurate or not, the belief is that the urgency that fueled “The Message,” “Fight the Power,” or even Kendrick’s “Alright” has been replaced by algo-rhythms and apathy.
A Broader Reckoning
Yet the bigger story isn’t musical—it’s cultural. Black art in general, itself the foundation of hip-hop, is clearly under siege under the current administration.
In 2025, the National Museum of African American History saw outreach funds slashed; several states rolled back Black history curricula under the guise of “balance”; HBCU funding has been threatened; DEI initiatives have been suspended; and monuments to civil-rights figures were either vandalized or quietly removed. Against that backdrop, rap’s disappearance from mainstream radio feels less like coincidence and more like consequence.
Even this year’s biggest rap single, Kendrick Lamar & SZA’s “Luther,” a genre-blurring ballad and one of the year’s few rap-adjacent Top 40 hits, felt like an anomaly, fueled mainly by the duo’s historic Super Bowl performance and enduring because the artists so cleverly tapped into Luther Vandross-based nostalgia in delivering the sensitive ballad.
Aside from that, hip-hop’s dominance, once assured and assumed to be permanent, now faces its first real test since it dethroned rock as America’s culture shifter. Maybe this is a reset before a renaissance—or maybe the mainstream culture has really moved on to other forms that echo hip-hop’s DNA without carrying its weight.
Not Dead—Just Between Verses?
But here’s the thing: Hip-hop still shapes fashion, slang, sports celebrations, and TikTok trends. It still drives the cultural conversation, even if it no longer leads the charts. The data might simply suggest America’s long romance with rap has entered a quieter phase—no longer a revolution, maybe now a reflection or worse, an also-ran.
Whether “Lover Girl” hangs on or falls off next week, Megan Thee Stallion’s lonely Top 40 entry is a reminder: the beat isn’t completely gone—maybe it’s just catching its breath. And as with every great art form, the question isn’t whether it comes back, but what it comes back as.
But another 35-year continuous streak beginning this week with Megan? Nah.
DJRob
DJRob (he/him) is a freelance music blogger from the East Coast who covers R&B, hip-hop, disco, pop, rock and country genres – plus lots of music news and current stuff! You can follow him on Bluesky at @djrobblog.bsky.social, X (formerly Twitter) at @djrobblog, on Facebook or on Meta’s Threads.
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