Yeah but we still had stars like T.I., Jay Z, Kanye West, Lil Wayne, etc doing numbers and scoring hits. You really can't compare it to now. And also, people like Drake hit the ground running. Drake started scoring hits in 2009 with a free mixtape.

The lack of new stars who are established and who can maintain a work ethic is what will kill mainstream rap. It's ridiculous that Drake, in 2025, is still the most exciting thing in rap to talk about. He shouldn't be the biggest name in rap at this point. That should be on someone younger and fresher. That should be the one who is the lightning rod.

So many of them were rooting for rap to fall off because Drake lost

Some even vowed to stop listening to rap

When Kendrick was killing the charts for over a year, where were these posts?

Now that Luther has been knocked off the charts, we get this. Man, if DJ B****** don't get the f*** outta here lmao.

When Driver’s License went no 1 and we still didn’t have at least one new one, I knew s*** was bad

“No new stars”

I've been saying that since before the beef because it was always something that was gonna happen. I don't want it to happen but it will and it's whatever if/when it does because I already have dozens of classic rap albums I'll be able to go back to till I die. Plus, the landscape is a s***storm anyways. The new cats are lazy and uncreative, the media side of things are only concerned about chasing clout and getting engagement. It's been cooked for a while now and the chicken is simply coming home to roost.

Agreed YB is def a star

They want the next star to be 17 years old and sell 500k tho

anyone is how i spell kdots name

monoculture isnt real anymore and theres 1000 different mainstreams

also the sneaker thing is a different thing imo thats just a new generation trying to establish their own s***. new balance def aint in that its really asics

I don’t like how the rappity head type figures and fans are trying to make this issue partisan, a “real hip hop fan vs fake hip pop fan” thing. This s*** affects the whole ecosystem of rap, nobody is thriving directly out of this

Hopefully, the new gen answers accordingly but that would be a solution. This is a problem

whataboutism bra

yall spent all of october disrespecting aubrey.

man rip doom fuk all dis

That's another thing that's affected rap. This idea that there's somehow "good rap" and "bad rap." That's especially something that was pushed once the beef took off. If you liked mainstream rap music that was popular or you like Drake, you weren't a real hip-hop fan but if you liked conscious rap or Kendrick then you were a real hip-hop fan. All that s*** further divided rap fans, many of which are now giving their listening time to pop and country music instead.

Rap is global now which is a testament to the work countless mainstream rappers have put it to expand the reach of the genre but you'll still see US rap fans mock and dismiss any rapper who isn't American, regardless of how dope they are. Just so very small-minded and stupid. Anyways.

Only a child would think mainstream vs real rap started with Kendrick vs Drake

God this b**** is an idiot

If you fan of hip hop and went to go listen to Morgan Wallen, we don’t want you racist ass fans anyways.

i was reading this questlove article on d'angelo and its so wild to see this lol its happening again

Good riddance

it was so cool when streaming chart update first hit and hip hop was undoubtably the biggest genre on earth idk i was so proud brah that

Thank god I don’t associate with anyone like this

Imagine saying “I’m done with rap, imma go listen to Sabrina Carpenter and Luke Combs”

also lets be real this whole hip hop "falling off" commercially thing is a combination of a lot of s***

1. recession is making it extremely hard for artist to tour, and with many of them skipping the necessary steps of doing smaller tours before arenas, its looking really bad for rap concerts because a lot getting canceled cause they just wont dat list in the first place.

2. billboard whether u like to admit it or not is clearly changing the rules to hip hop cant be as dominant as it was. u could argue that streaming was basically created for hip hop in terms of how our music is released dropped etc. they're patching the methods and we've seen slowly but surely drops in sales from ALL rappers (other genres too but u know what i mean)

3. were in a inbetween era similar to the 00s but no one is recognizing or accepting that not only are we transitioning, but we are extremely behind due to covid and the next generation of rappers are socially awkward and wetarded off government juiced spray zaza.

hip hop was always us vs them from the very start

conservatism also is playing into hip hops mainstream "fall off"

it felt like pre trump white people were like alright we gotta start playing the nigga meta so we gon adopt aave listen to rap etc (which they've always done. hip hop was probably da most popular genre in the 90s culturally the charts just didnt allow it to be fact) but now since were going backwards in time white folks going back to they bread and butter

why u think country back so hard