YouTube’s move to stop sharing streaming data for Billboard’s music charts could change how we think about metrics Billboard’s latest change, and YouTube’s subsequent action, point to a more ...

HIP-HOP WAS BORN in the Bronx in the summer of 1973. To celebrate the music’s 50th anniversary, “Rolling Stone” will be publishing a series of features, historical pieces, op-eds, and lists throughout ...

This story is the second installment of a three-part series discussing major changes in popular music throughout the course of 2024. Today’s story focuses on the current state of rap music. This year ...

“I wanna be a streamer one day too. I heard They pay better than rap.” This was a message platinum-selling rapper Polo G posted on his Instagram Stories back in January. The post included a ...

Like a soap opera, you skip an episode and lose track of the story. For the past month, two of the most successful hip-hop artists of recent times—Kendrick Lamar and Drake—have been embroiled in a ...

As hip-hop celebrated its 50th anniversary this year, headlines swirled around its potentially diminishing force as a commercial juggernaut: The first half of the year didn’t see a rap song or album ...

Yesterday, Billboard deputy editor and Stereogum buddy Andrew Unterberger published a piece with some confusing implications: On last week's Billboard Hot 100, there were no rap songs in the top 40.

Every year, we’re told that hip-hop is in crisis. But if you ask us, it feels like there’s too much heat to keep up with. What’s lost on the chart-watchers lamenting rap’s mainstream lull is that the ...

Starting in the late '70s, hip-hop and rap ascended through popular culture, mostly in America but also in other countries. Then, in 1990, a breakthrough. Hip-hop and rap tracks began infiltrating the ...

With Kendrick Lamar and SZA’s 13-week Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 “Luther” falling off the Hot 100 dated Oct. 25, 2025, there were officially no rap songs in the chart’s top 40 last week. The ...