RIP Top 40 Rap

I have a music quiz coming up. I'm confident I'll get most if not all 20th century questions correct but will struggle with the modern stuff. To help prepare I went to the current Top 40 on the Official Charts website where you can listen to a 30 second clip of each Top 40 hit.

It goes without saying that it was all terrible but one thing I noticed was there was no rap music.

In the last decade of so I've considered rap to be the silver lining in the Top 40. For the most part it's been the most prolific genre in the Top 40 to the point when I did my Top 40 Leaderboard posts I'd take a look at what percentage of the Top 40 new entries in the year so far were rap.

Not that I was a huge fan of the rap music that was getting into the Top 40 but more a case of it being after my time that anything else.

When you think of the main genres in the charts in years gone by there was always a mix of credible music and commercial fodder. Dance fans weren't into 2 Unlimited, rap fans weren't into Will Smith, R&B fans weren't into Destiny's Child etc. 

Somewhere along the way it was just your modern equivalents of 2 Unlimited or Destiny's Child charting from the dance and R&B worlds getting into the Top 40 but rap wise it went beyond your modern equivalent of Will Smith.

You had for example D-Block Europe who clocked up 30 Top 40 hits in the space of 5 years. Admittedly I couldn't name one of those hits top of my head and what I heard of them sounded rather boring but to their credit they didn't sound commercial in the slightest. 

Then again maybe I'm just old and out of touch. Maybe they were part of the problem of rap becoming too commercial and now we're seeing the inevitable backlash.

What is the music of the moment now then?

Based on the evidence I've just head I'm not really sure. Seemed to be mostly females with annoying voices so whatever genre that is.

Dominance of Rap in the Charts

As of yesterday we have now had 109 Top 40 hits so far this year that have been rap. That's significant because that's the same number of rap hits we had last year. One would assume we'll have more rap hits in the charts before the end of the year.

To give you an idea about how significant this is, the first rap Top 40 hit came in 1979 and the 109th came in 1991. Even if we look at the 2010s alone, we didn't have our 109th rap Top 40 hit of the decade until 2016. That hit in question came from Drake, one of the main people responsible for the dominance of rap. Since the start of 2017 he's had 40 Top 40 hits.

Has any other genre dominated the charts as much as rap has this year?

Well if we take pop music out of the equation, the genre to have the most Top 40 hits in a year is indie music in 2005 with 120. With over 2 months of the year left rap could easily reach that figure by the end of the year.

However, the difference here is that in 2005 we had 598 Top 40 hits, we haven't even reached 200 yet so far this year so proportionately the only thing that comes close is rap last year. 

The number of indie hits in the Top 40 has dwindled in recent years, there haven't been any so far this year. Rap may go the same way, but I think that's less likely.

When indie dominated the charts I think most people knew it. Bands like Snow Patrol and Kaiser Chiefs were household names. Ibiza Rocks was born because guitar music had become much more popular. Like with many genres that came before, it became the victim of its own success, people got sick of it and moved on.

With rap nowadays it's different though. People who don't follow the charts probably have no idea how dominant rap is. How many people are familiar with D-Block Europe or Aitch? Both big names chart wise at the moment.

Last years Christmas Top of the Pops had hardly any rap on it, nor did the year before. They would have you believe the chart was full of Ed Sheeran and David Guetta along with their respective clones.

But that means the kids will carry on listening to rap music safe in the knowledge it won't get played to death outside their streaming platform of choice. They probably don't even know the charts exist or that the music they're listening to is getting in the charts, so in their mind they're listening to something underground. At the same time, because they're streaming rap music to death of their own accord this will ensure rap will continue to dominate the charts in the near future at least.