Without Kendrick Lamar — or Drake — How Will Hip-Hop Show Up In the Grammys’ Biggest Categories?
Categoria: Musica
Without an obvious star in contention — and given some of hip-hop’s declines in the past year — the genre’s marquee category chances may be slimmer.
Por Billboard | 05/10/2026
“At the end of the day, nothing more powerful than rap music,” Kendrick Lamar said onstage at the 2025 Grammys. “We are the culture.” The Los Angeles rapper was accepting song of the year for “Not Like Us,” which won five awards that night, including record of the year. Lamar would return the following year to pick up another five Grammys for his GNX album and its smash SZA collaboration “Luther,” which made him the first solo male artist to win record of the year in consecutive years. And GNX was nominated for album of the year in 2026 alongside Tyler, The Creator’s Chromakopia and Clipse’s Let God Sort Em Out — only the second time three rap albums were up for that prize in the same year. Of late, hip-hop has had a starring role on Music’s Biggest Night — but 2027 could be different. As it has for much of the streaming era, hip-hop reigned supreme in 2026 as the most consumed form of popular music, leading all genres in streams. Look a little closer, however, and its chart dominance has been slipping for years. Related ‘Every Moment Is Massive and Magnificent’: Noah Kahan Reflects on a Monumental Year — And Eyes a Grammys Breakthrough Sienna Spiro’s Voice Broke Through — Now Comes the Fun Part What Does the Big Change to the Best New Artist Grammy Mean for Nominees? In October 2025, the Billboard Hot 100 had no rap songs in the top 40 for the first time since 1990. As of this September, no rapper has reached the chart’s top 10 as a lead artist this year outside of Drake, who notched nine songs in the region in the debut week of his much-anticipated ICEMAN album. Even in terms of sheer streams, the Luminate midyear report showed the R&B/hip-hop genre falling 1.6% year over year, while “experienc[ing] the sharpest decline in equivalent market share since 2023,” as its Billboard 200 market share fell from 40% to 30%. Meanwhile, this year, with no major eligible releases from Lamar — or Clipse or Tyler — it’s unclear who, if anyone, will carry the hip-hop torch at the 2027 Grammys. Similarly, after Doechii vied for best new artist and won best rap album in 2025 and followed it up with song and record of the year nominations in 2026, there’s not another rising star waiting in the wings. “This was a pretty weak year for standout [hip-hop] releases with storylines, with narratives,” observes academy member and record executive Riggs Morales. “Forget that it didn’t even sell. It just wasn’t even talked about [the same way].” Academy member Chris Anokute, who has worked as a senior vp at Universal Music Group and Epic Records, calls the doomier headlines about hip-hop’s downward overall commercial trajectory “fake news” and more about changes in the streaming landscape than anything else. But he does acknowledge that the relative lack of new genre stars on par with ascendant ones like Drake, Young Thug and Future from the 2010s is more than just an aberration. “I don’t know if you’re ever going to get that level of s