Rap’s Historic Chart Drought Continues, But The Music Tells A Different Story

Written by Malik Perkins
November 19th, 2025

For the first time in decades, the Billboard Hot 100 went an entire week without a single rap song in the Top 40. That moment has now stretched into multiple weeks and has sparked a quiet conversation across the industry about what this actually means. Rap once lived in the Top 40 the way water lives in a river. Seeing it disappear from that space feels jarring. But the surface doesn’t always reflect what’s happening underneath.

Because even with the charts cooling off, this year has delivered some of the strongest, most intentional rap projects we’ve had in a long time. There are albums where you can hear people caring again. You hear writing. You hear verses that build into something. You hear artists taking the time to shape full ideas instead of chasing a seven-second payoff.

The shift that’s hurting the genre at the chart level isn’t about talent. It’s the way songs are being built. More people are going straight into the booth and punching in one line at a time. That approach can capture a moment, but it doesn’t always create structure. The artists who stood out this year did the opposite. They wrote, whether that was on paper or silently in their head the way Wayne and Jay Z used to. They treated verses like real verses and hooks like something you have to earn.

There’s also a growing gap between what resonates culturally and what performs algorithmically. The charts lean toward the shortest, catchiest idea, not the most intentional one. Rap has always been at its best when it treats the song as a full thought. When the intro sets the mood, the verses carry weight, the transitions matter, and the hook ties everything together. When you listen to the albums that broke through artistically this year, they sound complete. They sound like someone cared whether the song would outlive the moment.

Rap has gone through cycles like this before. It has been counted out more times than anyone can remember, and every time it finds its way back by returning to its core: writing, storytelling, personality, and structure. Nothing in this drought says the genre is fading. It only says the culture is ready for a recalibration.

If anything, the music being made right now shows that the rebound has already started. The charts will eventually reflect it. They always do.