{"id":35767,"date":"2023-07-07T20:01:11","date_gmt":"2023-07-07T20:01:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/?p=35767"},"modified":"2023-07-07T20:01:22","modified_gmt":"2023-07-07T20:01:22","slug":"dead-rappers-dominate-spotifys-top-10-most-streamed-rap-albums","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/2023\/07\/07\/dead-rappers-dominate-spotifys-top-10-most-streamed-rap-albums\/","title":{"rendered":"Dead rappers dominate Spotify\u2019s top 10 most-streamed rap albums"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><br>Last week, Rap Caviar released a list of the 50 Most Streamed Hip-Hop Albums on Spotify.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The list is filled with albums by<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/2023\/06\/23\/burna-boy-becomes-the-first-african-artiste-to-hit-1-billion-audiomack-streams\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\" title=\"Burna Boy becomes the first African artiste to hit 1 billion Audiomack streams\"> artists<\/a> you would expect:\u00a0Drake,\u00a0Kendrick Lamar,\u00a0Travis Scott, and other superstars.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">What\u2019s alarming about the list is that half of the albums in the Top 10, including the No. 1 album, are by either&nbsp;XXXTentacion,&nbsp;Juice WRLD, or&nbsp;Pop Smoke\u2014all of whom tragically died in recent years before ever turning 22. &nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Two XXXTentacion albums, 2017\u2019s&nbsp;<em>17<\/em>&nbsp;and 2018\u2019s&nbsp;<em>?,<\/em>&nbsp;made the Top 10, with the latter&nbsp;topping the list. Juice WRLD\u2019s 2018 debut album&nbsp;<em>Goodbye &amp; Good Riddance<\/em>&nbsp;and 2020 posthumous album&nbsp;<em>Legends Never Die<\/em>&nbsp;both cracked the Top 10, while 2019\u2019s&nbsp;<em>Death Race For Love<\/em>&nbsp;landed at No. 13.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Finally, Pop Smoke\u2019s 2020 posthumous album\u00a0<em>Shoot For The Stars Aim For The Moon<\/em>\u00a0also made the Top 10 while his mixtape\u00a0<em>Meet The Woo 2<\/em>\u00a0landed at No. 37. \u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\"><p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Our celebration of 50 years of hip-hop continues with the 50 most streamed hip-hop albums on Spotify! Any surprises? <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/OqN9Qo7mJU\">pic.twitter.com\/OqN9Qo7mJU<\/a><\/p>&mdash; RapCaviar (@RapCaviar) <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/RapCaviar\/status\/1675912527354507274?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">July 3, 2023<\/a><\/blockquote><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.x.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Other names that frequent the list are all superstars. Drake has three albums in the Top 10, and eight in the Top 50 (that\u2019s 16% of the entire list). Eminem has six albums in the Top 50, Kendrick Lamar has three albums in the Top 25, and Kanye West has three albums in the Top 50. &nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Much has been made about hip-hop not scoring a\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.complex.com\/music\/a\/jose-martinez\/no-hip-hop-album-song-has-hit-no-1-in-2023\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\" title=\"No. 1 song or album this year\">No. 1 song or album this year<\/a>\u00a0so far\u2014a first since 1993\u2014and whether\u00a0the genre is in decline.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The streak of no No. 1 rap albums is likely to break once the numbers for Lil Uzi Vert\u2019s&nbsp;<em>The Pink Tape<\/em>&nbsp;come in next week\u2014if not, it\u2019s almost certainly going to break once Drake drops&nbsp;<em>For All The Dogs<\/em>&nbsp;and Travis returns with&nbsp;<em>Utopia<\/em>. After all, Uzi, Drake, and Travis are some of the biggest superstars in music right now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Yet Spotify\u2019s list highlights just how different the hip-hop landscape would be if burgeoning superstars like XXX, Pop, and Juice were still alive and releasing music.&nbsp;Just this week, Juice WRLD\u2019s&nbsp;Cordae&nbsp;collaboration \u201cDoomsday\u201d debuted at No. 58 on the Billboard charts, partially powered by a Cole Bennet music video that uses AI to recreate his face.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">XXXTentacion has 10 songs on Spotify with over a billion streams\u2014for comparison, Taylor Swift has one. Rap\u2019s biggest breakout star (and increasingly reliable hitmaker) in 2023 is Ice Spice, an artist who emerged from the same New York drill scene Pop Smoke helped pioneer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">All of those late artists had their share of controversies,\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.complex.com\/music\/a\/tracewilliamcowen\/xxxtentacion-abuse-case-testimony\" title=\"\">especially XXX<\/a>, but there is no denying their musical impact and lasting influence.\u00a0You can argue that the notoriety from their deaths brought a renewed interest in their work, especially for their posthumous releases, but death permeates rap in a way it doesn\u2019t with other genres.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">We\u2019ve lost so many stars and would be-stars in recent years that I\u2019m afraid to list them all because the last time I did, I had to update my draft because another rapper was killed before I could even press publish. The reasons so many rappers are dying are complicated, though there is a constant undercurrent of systemic racism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Regardless of the why, the fact is, this is where we\u2019re at. Maybe hip-hop is in decline, maybe it\u2019s not. For the genre to continue to thrive and evolve, it needs stars who are innovative, experimental, and charismatic. Pop, Juice, and XXX were all those things. And now they\u2019re gone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Does that spell doom for the genre? Well, hip-hop was once in this position before; in 1997, The Notorious B.I.G. was gunned down just six months after 2Pac was killed. Rap lost two iconic stars. Yet the genre managed to reach new heights in the late 90s and 2000s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Rap seemingly crescendoed in 2017, as the streaming era took full effect and rappers took full advantage. That\u2019s also why Spotify\u2019s list skews towards 2010\u2019s artists (Spotify also launched in the US in 2011). In fact, there are only two albums in Spotify\u2019s Top 50 from the \u201990s. The oldest album on the list is from 1996, 2Pac\u2019s&nbsp;<em>All Eyez On Me.&nbsp;<\/em>Some legends never die.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Last week, Rap Caviar released a list of the 50 Most Streamed Hip-Hop Albums on Spotify.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":35769,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_post_source_name":"","_post_source_url":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[80],"tags":[2460,11974,10282,6083,7234,9375,10505,5241,1160,3593,10925,2708,2659,6425,9515,2707,10634,6220,10477,5058,990,11973,10277,6200,504,9028,428,9761,11179,8318,1217,6503,2705,5350,6348,8033,10415,594],"class_list":["post-35767","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-ai","tag-album","tag-billboard","tag-dead","tag-death","tag-decline","tag-die","tag-died","tag-drake","tag-eminem","tag-ice","tag-juice-wrld","tag-kanye-west","tag-kendrick-lamar","tag-killed","tag-lil-uzi-vert","tag-lost","tag-love","tag-moon","tag-music","tag-new-york","tag-one","tag-pop-smoke","tag-race","tag-racism","tag-rap","tag-rapper","tag-shoot","tag-smoke","tag-spotify","tag-taylor-swift","tag-travis","tag-travis-scott","tag-twitter","tag-us","tag-video","tag-work","tag-who"],"blocksy_meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35767","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35767"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35767\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35769"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35767"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35767"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35767"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}