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For the first time in 30 years, no hip-hop album or song has hit no. 1 in 2023.

You seem to understand mainstream & underground are connected. If nothing poppin in the underground, it affects the mainstream too. It's ike a trickle down or up effect , nah mean?

There was a time when the mainstream and underground weren't completely separated. I mean you used to hear rappers like Busta and the Wu refer to themselves as underground even after gaining mainstream success.
 
There was a time when the mainstream and underground weren't completely separated. I mean you used to hear rappers like Busta and the Wu refer to themselves as underground even after gaining mainstream success.
Yes I agree.
Even Krs one said you can be mainstream or commercial rapper yet still be underground.
He explains it in this song

 
Fortunately, it looks like the naysayers were wrong because the genre is rebounding in 2024. We’re only three full months into the year, and there have already been three No. 1 rap albums; 21 Savage’s American Dream, Ye and Ty Dolla Sign’s Vultures, and Future and Metro Boomin’s We Don’t Trust You. Future and Metro’s We Still Don’t Trust You is expected to top next week’s chart as well. For comparison, there were zero No. 1 rap albums by April 2023.

It wasn’t just albums. No rap songs topped the Billboard Hot 100 until September, when Doja Cat’s “Paint The Town Red” snapped a dry spell that had lasted for over a year. In 2024, it took less than two weeks for Jack Harlow’s “Lovin’ On Me” to become hip-hop’s first chart-topper. This was soon followed by No. 1 songs from Megan Thee Stallion (“Hiss”); Ye, Ty Dolla Sign, Rich the Kid, and Playboi Carti (“Carnival”); and Future, Metro Boomin, and Kendrick Lamar (“Like That”), the latter of which has now been sitting at No. 1 for three weeks straight. Hip-hop already has as many No. 1 songs in 2024 as it did all of 2023.

 
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