Chatter about the decline of hip-hop's commercial success in 2025 continues, and now, there's some new data that proves just how bad things have gotten. Reportedly, zero rap songs landed in the top 40 of the Billboard Hot 100 last week. The last time this happened was in February of 1990. At the time, the highest-ranked song was Biz Markie's “Just a Friend." The hit later worked its way up into the top 10.
Per Billboard, the highest ranking rap song currently is NBA YoungBoy's MASA track, “Shot Callin" at No. 44. That's followed by Cardi B’s Am I The Drama? track “Safe” featuring Kehlani at No. 48 and BigXthaPlug’s I Hope You're Happy track “Hell at Night” featuring Ella Langley at No. 49.
One factor that contributes to some songs' drop-off is a recent change to Billboard Hot 100 rules. Descending songs are considered recurrent and can be taken off the chart after a certain amount of time, depending on their ranking.
Is Hip Hop Dying?
This is far from the first evidence fans have seen of hip-hop's commercial decline in recent months, however. It's also reflected in the lineups of popular music festivals like Coachella. When the fest dropped its star-studded list of 2026 performers in September, there was a noticeable absence of hip-hop acts.
Only six of them made the cut, including Swae Lee, Clipse, Little Simz, Central Cee, Sexyy Red, and Young Thug. What's more is that none of them are headliners. Instead, those headlining slots are being filled by pop artists like Sabrina Carpenter and Justin Bieber, along with Colombian singer Karol G.
This marks a 70% drop off from 2022, when an impressive 19 hip-hop artists were featured on the Coachella lineup. It also marks just the second time since 2017 that the number of hip-hop artists on the lineup was under 10. The 2025 rendition of the lineup boasted 10 hip-hop artists, while 2024 and 2023 boasted 9 and 17, respectively.
