Nicki Minaj Faces Hip-Hop’s Middle-Age Conundrum

When the hip-hop legend André 3000 confused the world by releasing an album of experimental flute music earlier this year, he offered a simple explanation for why he’s stopped rapping: “I’m 48 years old,” he told GQ. He gave examples of personal concerns that he found lyrically unusable: “I got to go get a colonoscopy’ … ‘My eyesight is going bad.’ You can find cool ways to say it, but … ”

André was describing a challenge facing many artists in the year of . The genre began as an outlet for young people on the margins—as Ye once, by the producer Kenny Segal and the rapper billy woods, is a meta-memoir about midlife burnout. The typically provocative recently put out a defeated-sounding album, , whose opening chorus asks, “You 40, still doing this shit?”