Hip hop is undeniably dominating the music industry right now, in fact 10 songs on spotify’s top ten songs at the moment are hip hop songs. Artists like Drake, Kendrick Lamar, and Juice WRLD are some of the most popular hip hop artists right now. People have many varying opinions about hip hop dominating the industry. Some people think it’s the best kind of music and other people think it isn’t even music at all.

Barack Obama said “The thing about hip-hop today is it’s smart, it’s insightful. The way they can communicate a complex message in a very short space is remarkable.”  Yes, even the former president of the United States loves hip hop. In fact, the majority of american people love hip hop, 2017 was the first time hip-hop surpassed rock as the most popular music genre in the US , according to Nielsen’s year-end report on the music industry. Eight out of top ten most popular artists came from the hip-hop genre,  Drake and Kendrick Lamar taking the first and second spot respectively. Nielsen stated that the growth of the hip-hop genre is “Powered by a 72% increase in on-demand audio streaming” in the genre. Its even hard to turn on the radio and not hear a hip hop song.

Some of the top tracks are Drakes in my feelings, Juice WRLDs lucid dreams, and 6ix9ines fefe. Hip hop is often criticized for its vulgar and obscene lyrics but teens don’t seem to mind one bit, but often the older and more conservative crowd does not agree. When asked why he does not like hip hop A. Torrejon gave a few reasons which are: machismo, indecent language, rescued reliance on conventional instruments, and racism and a bias toward certain demographics. Ethan Hein, a music technology and music education professor said that the reason why hip hop gets hate is because of racism. He stated that “Every significant advance in African-American music has been met with widespread contempt, revulsion, and terror by the mass white audience. Jazz, blues, rock and disco all caused moral panics and were the subject of blanket condemnation in their day. Only after their moment of cultural urgency had passed did they belatedly find acceptance among mainstream (white) critics, academics, and other gatekeepers. So it is with hip-hop.”