Monocultural Rap Stardom is Dead—And That's OK

More and more, I find myself repeating the same phrase when I see the way other people engage with music: “Everything’s new to somebody.” That meant something different when the only places you could find your new favorite rapper were at a live show, in a music magazine, at a music store, on TV, or on the radio; whether you were into 50 Cent, Kanye West, or Lil Wayne, chances were you at least knew something about the other two. Now, the internet has further isolated our avenues of consumption, and our attention spans. A unified monoculture hardly exists and so everything—from music to movies to politics,—is siloed into niches of varying popularity. This fragmentation has put rap under the microscope, as conversations about its longevity and viability sprout up across the internet. 

Many are hammering the point that, similarly to how Beyonce and Taylor Swift have yet to abdicate their pop thrones for newer acts, rap has yet to usher in its next generation of superstars. Blog-era titans from the 2010s are still hogging space on the charts and in the discourse; the Kendrick Lamar and Drake beef further exacerbated this in 2024, on top of introducing the idea of a Big Three—in this case, Kendrick Lamar, Drake, and North Carolina’s J. Cole, who more or less inserted himself onto the ballot—currently holding the torch of commercial, critical, and cultural influence (Rap fans have debated and ranked their favs since the genre’s birth, but the idea of a consensus Big Three holding court wasn’t a thing before Cole coined it during his verse on Drake’s “First Person Shooter,” and canonized further when Kendrick later refuted it on his verse from Future and Metro Boomin’s “Like That.”) Last year, Billboard reported that no rap song had charted in the top 40 of their Hot 100 during the week of October 25th, breaking a streak that had been in place since 1990. The intelligentsia seems eager to play up hip-hop’s decline every chance it gets, but the last year-and-a-half of speculation has been particularly heinous. Looking at rap, or any modern form of media, solely through the lens of the overculture in 2026 is a fool’s errand because the most exposed areas aren’t the ones where things are thriving right now.

Let’s start with the fact that the idea of monocultural superstardom as we knew it at the turn of the century is dead. Between the resurgence of blogs and newsletters (like this one!), ulta-specific niches fueled by online communities like Discord, and the endlessly deep pockets of social media, the type of ubiquity enjoyed by artists like Kanye or Wayne at their peaks is virtually impossible to attain today. Contemporary heavy hitters are broadcasting from what seem like their own universes these days. Controversial Baton Rouge rapper YoungBoy Never Broke Again can play sold-out stadium tours across the country to hundreds of thousands of diehard fans, rack up platinum plaques, and dominate YouTube Music streaming numbers, all without truly penetrating the mainstream bubble. Conversations surrounding J. Cole, which should be centered around his surprise mixtape Birthday Blizzard ‘26 and his upcoming alleged retirement album The Fall-Off, are instead geared around the ham-fisted way he’s attempting to reframe his infamous self-exile from the purported Big 3 on “Bronx Zoo Freestyle.” Fellow blog-era stalwart A$AP Rocky’s latest album Don’t Be Dumb, his first in eight years, has already been relegated to the topical trashcan in the two weeks since it dropped. Hijacking the mass consciousness is the ultimate play for artists of that size, but they’re still lording over siloed colonies within the same ecosystem. Exceptions, like Kendrick and Drake, only prove the rule.

I don’t judge the health of rap music by how it’s faring at the top of the charts, but there are other interesting criticisms causing pundits and fans to claim the sky is falling on the genre. Rap is an extension of the Black experience, which remains a crucial driver of every facet of popular culture. It’s also a form of voyeurism for non-Black folks: entire online communities exist that stalk and consume gang activity like it’s the Marvel Cinematic Universe. That baton is in the process of being passed to live streamers, who are currently thriving in our attention economy. Some, like the New Jersey natives PlaqueBoy Max and DJ Akademiks, have made rap an immutable part of their brands, but others, like Kai Cenat and IShowSpeed, offer a more direct connection to Black culture, lifestyle, and slang. Some critics theorize that by offering a fix of Blackness without that pesky music part, streamers will eat into rap’s digital footprint. I think the music will find and connect with who it’s meant to, and anyone willing to leave it behind for an “easier” access to consume and exploit Black culture is a vulture who shouldn’t be taken seriously anyway.

Another lingering criticism is of stars not doing the best job of pulling people up behind them, which isn’t entirely fair. Kendrick is responsible for pushing Baby Keem to stardom, and used his last album as a springboard for the next generation of California street rappers, even if I think that decision was a cynical chess move on his part. Cole’s Dreamville imprint put on for several likeminded artists, though only rapper J.I.D. and R&B singer Ari Lennox made any larger cultural impact. Lil Baby, Playboi Carti, and Lil Yachty, who all started under the wings of bigger artists, are now fathers of their own lively crews and scenes. Success varies across these examples, but at least they’ve made an effort. When people trot this criticism out, it’s usually a thinly veiled way of saying they don’t like the artists currently making their ascent, which is fine. But instead of letting their curiosity lead them to further-out corners of rap, it’s more likely to atrophy into nostalgia, and so they blame the changing tides for ruining the genre they once loved. 

Rap has always thrived at the local level, and the bifurcation of scenes below the mainstream has only made them more potent.  Street rap continues to pop off in cities like Philadelphia, Detroit and Flint, Michigan and California. Local sounds like plugg from Atlanta, juke and footwork from Chicago, and minimalist Houston swag rap still exist. Lyrically limber rappers in the mold of more traditionalist hip-hop are either keeping the traditions alive or bending them into weirder shapes. You don’t have to dig that deep to find the good shit. Florida rapper Denzel Curry, who got his start at the cusp of the blog and SoundCloud eras and has staked out a comfortable existence in rap’s middle commercial tier, put it best in a recent Apple Music interview: “Commercial hip-hop is dead and I’m fucking here for it. Motherfuckers always try to devalue the art that got us out the projects. Rap is at a rebirth stage, a phoenix stage. I hear it in hardcore, I hear it in K-pop. Everyone wants to take from us, and then they wanna say, ‘Oh, you’re rappers.’” The sneering commentary Curry mocks at the end stems from a frustration with the average’s listener who doesn’t know their history and can’t tell the difference between a knockoff and the real thing. But he goes beyond complaining about it by actively working to be the change he wants to see in the world. Comb through Curry’s discography or look at his recent tour bills and you’ll see the names of artists he’s invited into his world and exposed to his audience. Same goes for Earl Sweatshirt, who frequently shouts out smaller acts in interviews and spent his last American tour bringing acts like Mavi, Niontay, Liv.e, and Zelooperz around the country. 

Both Curry and Sweatshirt exposed me to 454. He’s been a fixture of the underground for years, but the Florida rapper-producer and skateboarder’s profile has expanded in recent years thanks to various cosigns. After seeing him open for Mike and Earl respectively, I finally witnessed the intensity of 454’s fanbase at one of his own shows in New York, two nights ago. Temperatures were in the teens, but the Brooklyn venue The Meadows was packed with hundreds of fans eager to see him and openers Anysia Kym and Pig The Gemini. Couples huddled close to each other as Pig serenaded the crowd with cuts from her Lover Girl EP, while Kym ran through silky digital tracks from recent collaborations with Tony Seltzer and Lorraine James. But when 454 hit the stage, the 200 or so couple attendees suddenly felt like a sea of thousands. Grown men crooned to “Tales From The Hood” and “Spike’s Hotline” and rapped furiously over the thumping bass of “Globetrotter.” A man in front of me spent the entire set pulling off dance moves and shooting imaginary basketballs in a varsity jacket. The enthusiasm in the room reached fawning pop star levels by the time “Gushers & Go-Karts” blasted over the speakers

As the show ended, fans decked in 454 t-shirts, Happy99 accessories, and all kinds of streetwear crowded around the stage for a chance to talk to the 29-year-old rapper. I lost count of the stories I heard that started with “I saw you open for Denzel/Mike/Earl [x] amount of years ago…” as 454 smiled, humbly thanked them, and posed for pictures. It’s difficult to watch a group of fans interacting with their artist this earnestly and feel even the slightest doubt about the future of rap music. Not only is 454 a product of the kind of co-signs that used to make or break artists, they’ve helped him achieve a level of cult fandom currently taking him across the country and the world. In that moment, the thought of the Big 3 felt superfluous. He may never become a household name, may never play Madison Square Garden or pop up on your favorite Twitch personality’s livestream, but to the tens of thousands of fans wearing out copies of Casts of A Dreamer, he might as well be Kendrick.