It feels like the last 2/3 years has been an insane come up for artists that are making more "urban like" music, the whole white girl pop music trend seems to be dying very quickly in the US right now with even Ariana Grande struggling to do crazy numbers & Summer Walker selling the same as her first week even with Ariana's insane popularity. Summer even outsold The Weeknd a year after the superbowl

I'm curious why you guys think this is, how come these urban artists have grown so much in popularity in the last few years? I really do think this is another reason Drake for example is still so immensely popular, he's constantly collabing with these upcoming urban artists which helps him stay relevant with those fanbases.

if you look at the collabs The Weeknd has done in the last few years it's Tyler the Creator, Lil Wayne, Ariana Grande, Post Malone, Rosalia, Swedish House Mafia, Kanye West, Doja Cat, Calvin Harris, Juice Wrld etc. Whilst I think a lot of those collabs were high quality - I think there's an issue there, almost all of those artists share almost the exact same fan base as The Weeknd which is mostly white people. There's no branching out into other fan bases like Drake does for example. I think this is a huge reason that The Weeknd is struggling to do crazy streams in the US lately. I think it's also the reason Ariana Grande is.

just a note as I'm sure someone will bring it up; I totally get that a s*** ton of white people listen to lil baby, summer, gunna etc; but you can't really ignore these artists have insanely huge non white listener fanbases.

This is the cycle of music

The streets create a new sound > The industry milks it dry

the word urban is outdated af

Urban’s music

Dope

isn't this bad for the top labels? as these new stars are less controlled/owned by the top execs vs artists like Weeknd/Ariana from what I know. I might be wrong though