Last week marked a shocking development in the music world, as for the first time in over 35 years there wasn’t a single rap song in Billboard’s top 40 tracks of the week.
You don’t have to be a music connoisseur to understand how unprecedented this is. Rap’s had the music world in a chokehold for the past three decades, and only five years ago held almost 30% of music’s market share. Yet despite this recent success, rap seems to currently be on a commercial decline, with the highest charting rap song last week being NBA YoungBoy’s “Shot Callin’” at number 44.
There’s a number of reasons for this falloff – a tweak to Billboard’s rules preventing long-charting songs from maintaining their position as well as Taylor Swift’s “The Life of a Showgirl” taking up 12 spots have certainly played a part. However, in my opinion, this decline is mainly due to a lack of quality rap being released by the genre’s most prominent figures.
It has been an absolutely abysmal year for mainstream rap releases. From Travis Scott’s mess of an album in “JACKBOYS 2,” Young Thug’s snoozefest “UY Scuti,” and Playboi Carti’s middling “MUSIC,” many of rap’s biggest hitmakers have completely whiffed in 2025.
A lack of output from some of the industry’s biggest stars hasn’t helped matters either, with icons such as Drake, Kendrick Lamar, and Future remaining mostly dormant and seemingly pushing their releases to next year.
It’s definitely important to draw the line between mainstream rap and rap as a whole, as there hasn’t been a lack of good rap altogether — far from it. Lesser-known albums like Freddie Gibbs’ “Alfredo 2” and Clipse’s “Let God Sort Em Out” have made 2025 a standout year for the genre.. But these artists just don’t have the mainstream appeal to pull rap out of its current slump.
So how does rap make a comeback? As of right now, it’s uncertain. There has been a rap song to re-enter the top 40 since last week, with Megan Thee Stallion’s “Lover Girl” squeaking in at number 38, but it is unlikely it will remain there for long.
Outside of Kanye West’s “Bully” (which will almost surely be garbage), no mainstream artists have any 2025 releases planned at the moment, though that could change in the coming months as the holidays approach. Right now, it seems rap’s hitmakers are punting on the year and hopefully gearing up for a big 2026.
In an age where attention spans are shorter than ever and everyone’s looking for the next big thing, rap can’t afford to go much longer without the spotlight. If the biggest stars continue to fail to captivate audiences, rap’s spring of commercial success might just run dry.
Each opinion represented in The Panther Press is the view and voice of the writer. Opinions, as the selection and curation of content by the editors, do not represent the views of the entire Panther Press staff, the adviser, the school, or the administration.
