IS A HIP-HOP RENAISSANCE IN THE OFFING?
Thanks in large part to Kendrick Lamar, hip-hop is enjoying an undeniable surge in the marketplace. Could this substantial uptick mean that the genre, which has largely been eclipsed at the top of the charts by pop, country and Latin recently, is in the midst of a real renaissance?
Not that we haven’t had hard-charging, top-charting rap records in the last couple of years. Travis Scott had a giant with 2023’s UTOPIA (Cactus Jack/Epic)—now at 3.2m in U.S. ATD—which he followed with a positively enormous world tour. His labelmate Future and Republic’s Metro Boomin teamed up for two vital 2024 albums that played a role in the present cycle, We Don’t Trust You and We Still Don’t Trust You (1.7m and 647k ATD, respectively); the former boasted the smash “Like That” f/Kendrick. And Columbia’s Tyler, the Creator dropped a biggie in October with his CHROMAKOPIA, which has done 1.1m and was clearly a significant creative and commercial leap for the inventive artist.
Yet as successful as all these recordings were, they didn’t affect the cultural conversation the way Kendrick has.
The era’s big rap kahuna is single “Not Like Us,” Kendrick’s spicy beef special, which became a roaring success on the DSPs (it’s enjoyed more than 1.1 billion global streams on Spotify alone) and ultimately won both Record and Song of the Year at the Grammys. It was followed by his smash pgLang/Interscope album GNX, which bowed with 353k last fall and, following the rapper’s triumphant Grammy and Super Bowl sundays, returned to #1 with a vigorous 247k. It’s racked up 1.4m in ATD.
Mr. Lamar has the top four songs at Spotify U.S. as of this writing, with the SZA duet “luther” and “Not Like Us” leading (they're also Top 5 on the global chart) and two of the Top 5 at Apple Music.
All this top-of-the-culture visibility also supercharged K-Dot’s catalog, particularly albums DAMN. (9m ATD) and good kid, m.A.A.d city (9.4m).
Drake, the other principal in said beef, has resurfaced with a new set, $ome $exy $ongs 4 U, a collaboration with PARTYNEXTDOOR released via Republic/OVO/Santa Anna. The set co-owns the Apple Music Top 20 with Kendrick (and one SZA/Kendrick track) and pinged the Top 15 at Spotify USA on the way to what’s expected to be a chart bow in the neighborhood of 250k. That’s a considerably smaller sum, admittedly, than was generated by either the last proper Drake album, For All the Dogs, which debuted north of 400k in October of 2023, or his last collaborative set, Her Loss (with 21 Savage), which also did 400k+ when it arrived in November, 2022.
TDE/Capitol’s Doechii is the newest hip-hop act to make a loud noise. The BNA nominee was already buzzing going into the Grammys, thanks to acclaimed album Alligator Bites Never Heal (262k ATD) and some undeniably great performances at festivals and on NPR’s Tiny Desk Concert (she’s repped for live by Caroline Yim at WME). The Tampa native snagged the Rap Album trophy and knocked her performance of buzzing tracks “CATFISH” and “DENIAL IS A RIVER” out of the park on Music’s Biggest Night. The latter cut subsequently sailed into the upper register of the Spot’s U.S. chart, where it’s currently #8. Rumors are swirling that the dynamic, witty rapper-singer will have a new album this year.
While TDE/RCA’s SZA is more renowned as a singer-songwriter, her work certainly exists in the orbit of hip-hop, and she has dueted with Kendrick several times—most recently on the aforementioned #1 DSP smash “luther,” from his album, and “30 for 30,” from her expanded SOS set, aka LANA (“30” is now Top 15 at Spotify U.S. and the album has notched 15m global ATD and 19b streams worldwide). SZA, who recently made her charming feature-film debut as co-star of the buddy comedy One of Them Days, will join Kendrick for a Live Nation-promoted stadium tour that will commence in mere months.
This year has also seen a strong return by Quality Control/Motown’s Lil Baby, whose WHAM bowed at #1 with 145k in January and is now at 319k ATD. The artist is slated to go out on a big, Live Nation-backed world tour this summer.
Another recent breakout is Columbia’s Central Cee, whose “Sprinter” with Dave was the first cut by a British rapper to get traction in the U.S. That track has logged more than 853m global streams on Spotify, while his subsequent duet with Lil Baby, “BAND4BAND,” has amassed north of 400m streams worldwide on the platform. Cee is poised for a sizable global tour in the spring.
We should note that Wasserman’s Brent Smith reps K-Dot, SZA, Drake, Future, Central Cee and CMG/Interscope breakout GloRilla, among others, while the agency’s Kevin Shivers is the agent of record for Tyler and Lil Baby (not to mention Kid Cudi, Wiz Khalifa and more) and their colleague James Rubin represents Travis.
If all this chart and box-office heat for hip-hop weren’t enough to signal the genre’s mainstream revival, we refer you to the SNL 50 sketch featuring Will Ferrell and Ana Gasteyer as lounge singers The Culps. The pair’s riotously unhip renderings of the day’s big hits included Kendrick’s “Not Like Us” and Doechii’s “Catfish.” The audience’s mixture of delighted recognition and disbelief underscored how much these songs—and these artists—are being talked about.
Will all this rap action continue—perhaps further buoyed by other forthcoming releases—or is it a bubble spurred by the irresistible drama of “Not Like Us?” We won’t hazard a guess, but we’ll keep watching the numbers.
Will all this rap action continue—perhaps further buoyed by other forthcoming releases—or is it a bubble spurred by the irresistible drama of “Not Like Us?”