Is rap, the most influential musical genre of the last 50 years, starting to lose ground?

Is rap, the most influential musical genre of the last 50 years, starting to lose ground?

For the first time in 35 years there are no rap songs in the Top 40 of. BILLBOARD HOT 100.

The last time there were no rap songs in the Top 40 was February 2, 1990, when the highest-charting rap song was BIZ MARKIE's “JUST A FRIEND,” which peaked at No. 41.

This is partly due to a new rule introduced by Billboard, the “recurrent rule”. Basically, if after a certain number of weeks a song drops beyond a certain position, it is removed, which happened to “LUTHER” BY Kendrick Lamar, which left the chart. This happened because, according to the new rule introduced by Billboard, if a song falls below the 50th position after 20 weeks on the charts, or if it falls below the 25th position after 52 weeks, it is removed from the charts. This should favor the rotation of songs in the charts, but still penalizes artists who have songs in the charts for more than a year.

It must be said, however, that rap, which remains the number one musical genre in the USA, is losing ground and that other genres, such as pop, rock, Latin and country, are growing significantly and constantly.

It should also be noted that the Coachella Festival is slowly moving away from hip hop and that the lineup for the 2026 edition features a small number of rap artists, this is the lowest number of rap artists in the lineup in over 15 years and in the coming years, if hip hop does not confirm its predominance, it could become a predominantly pop festival.