How niche rap stars quietly conquered 2022
If you can't find the emergent rap stars in 2022, you might be looking in the wrong place. A recent Billboard feature about hip-hop's status as a market leader suggested that a generation of rap stars is aging out and few new ones are filling the void. But scan lists of the most streamed artists of the year and, between the boldface names of artists like Drake, Future, Eminem and Kendrick Lamar, you will find a few whose presence feels less inevitable. The metrics for stardom have always required specific machinery, but that machinery has been altered in the 2020s, thanks in large part to changes in streaming infrastructure. The digital paths we came to recognize in the last decade tended to aim at an eventual level-up: leveraging a base on SoundCloud into radio play, or turning a viral video into a TV spot. For some in this latest generation, that kind of signal boost is beside the point.
To be fair, it is true that hip-hop is facing some critical challenges that have curbed its star power in recent years. Its lyrics have become a favorite tool of the carceral system, both stateside and abroad. An obscene number of young rap stars have been and the , respectively. (As usual, rap is merely reflecting the values of American culture.) Meanwhile, a few of rap's biggest names have tanked their own careers in public lately. DaBaby talked his way into oblivion. Questions remain about Travis Scott's culpability in the deaths of concertgoers during the Astroworld festival in 2021. His mentor Kanye West, or Ye, spent months effectively self-identifying as antisemitic, before capping the year with a note of that seemed to stun even the notorious far-right conspiracy theorist Alex Jones.
