How Hip-Hop Culture “Revived” Itself & Declared War On Its Leaders In 2024

2024 might just be the most consequential year of the decade so far within hip-hop, but this presumed revival was preluded by many fans carrying the culture’s casket. The conversation around the death of rap in 2023 became an exhausting one, as listeners questioned the genre’s direction amid a drought of No. 1-selling singles and albums. While the year still gave us some incredible artistry, it also generated debates around values, ethics, tradition, and change that clearly led to the art form drawing a line in the sand in 2024. Much to the excitement of hip-hop lovers, it worked. More No. 1 singles and albums from early in the year all the way to the end, more than double the number of weeks atop the Billboard Hot 100, and according to Luminate’s 2024 Midyear Music Industry Report, continued success as the United States’ overall most popular genre.

This commercial success and visibility of rap was, of course, led by blockbuster moments. Kanye West and Ty Dolla $ign let their VULTURES fly, Nicki Minaj and Megan Thee Stallion clashed, Future had three No. 1 projects across different sides of his artistry, Travis Scott’s Days Before Rodeo re-release proved its resonance ten years later, GloRilla hit her peak, Tyler, The Creator showcased how artists don’t need to conform to the industry to succeed and connect, and obviously, Kendrick Lamar and Drake duked it out in the greatest rap battle of the millennium. But amid all this success were also RICO trials, incarcerations, raids, and lawsuits that pointed towards the fall of hip-hop’s leaders in this line-in-the-sand moment. In 2024, rap did not define its growth solely by sales. It was a cultural breaking point that we cannot take for granted this time.

Our theory about the culture’s artistic evolution back in 2023, especially as it relates to “the death of hip-hop,” was proven true this year. Hip-hop is more dead the smaller your scope of discovery is; you’ll find greatness if you seek it. But in 2024, rap’s commercial strides made this call for more variety and curation a much easier and more wide-reaching mission than it was last year. Underground favorites like xaviersobased, Nettspend, and LAZER DIM 700 found critical and cultural acclaim, the beef showcased lingering passion for lyricism that many had declared a fading memory, the West Coast’s staggering celebrations during its generational 2024 hip-hop run created an intoxicating atmosphere, and there was no shortage of culturally or socially relevant masterpieces like Mach-Hommy’s #RICHAXXHAITIAN, Rapsody’s Please Don’t Cry, MAVI’s shadowbox, and the legendary Ka’s final album.

Any artistic argument against rap’s excellence in 2024 would be favoring big-picture criticism over fair community assessment. Nevertheless, anti-fandom persisted this year as old heads continued to police new trends and rising stars dismissed the legends before them–nothing new for the genre, we might add, but at a more visible and eye-catching level than previous discussions. This time around, though, breakout champs like Doechii were more successful, beloved, and rewarded for their efforts, adding a little more hope to the pot at hip-hop’s highest levels than there was 12 months ago. So from a pure musical and artistic standpoint, the culture continues to make the 2020s feel like a renaissance of almost every era prior while paving new ground. But the reason it’s at this combative binary, as far as direction, is largely thanks to its two biggest superstars.

The Kendrick Lamar and Drake battle, for better or worse, aimed to define “what the culture’s feeling,” something that this writer–to quote Justin Hunte–is not in the position to properly contextualize. As much as they lead two schools of thought within hip-hop and popular music, the centralization of this binary within mainstream rap often fails to properly assess how similar they are. Both play at the biggest stages possible (“Big as the what?”), both made abhorrent allegations they cannot prove, and both peppered their run of diss tracks with many contradictions. In other words, they already bought in, and the industry followed suit–or rather, the industry followed the money. No narrative dominated fan engagement this heavily in 2024, but it also set up an easy out for both K.Dot and Drizzy stans to excuse and goalpost-shift.

By overshadowing the artistic merits of the battle to an admittedly small degree, the debate watered it down to “lesser evil” rhetoric, Twitter threads, and the concept of being “right” after tallying up all the points. The real reason why this beef between Kendrick Lamar and Drake became difficult to “believe in” is because the discourse around it somewhat limited people’s view of hip-hop today. They are not your only options, and they are certainly not the ones who will actually fix any of the problems that they rap about on their diss tracks, whether that’s culture vultures or 20v1s. To put it bluntly, this feud was too big; it would inevitably betray itself at some point. The “righteous” option’s victory this time around is certainly beneficial, but it only clinched its win because it’s where the industry followed the money, propping up one golden goose over another… Allegedly.

Yes, Drake’s petition against Universal Music Group and Spotify is basically one huge open secret scolded by someone who–in all likelihood–benefitted from presumed neo-payola practices until he lost a rap battle. But not only could this be a ploy to get out of a UMG deal, but it’s also not wrong… At least, on paper. A move against the industry is a move against the industry nonetheless, especially if this goes as deep as it seems like it could. Smaller artists could potentially benefit greatly from a precedent-setting ruling here that addresses these alleged schemes. But it would still require so much more advocacy and collective action regarding low streaming pay, predatory contracts, and cutthroat business practices to be worth the optical disaster of the petition. Even if this has little to do with the Kendrick Lamar beef specifically, that context burned into people’s minds and judgments.

Regardless of whether Drake succeeds, we have to set this context aside and think about what the defendants really did here without even having to try, bots or no bots. The label houses the two biggest rappers right now, so of course they wanted to milk whoever came out on top for their overall benefit. This is an opportunity for the culture to gather and combat this boxing-in of the battle, which fans took more seriously than we’ve seen in a long time. But it’s becoming harder and harder to find new answers for the culture’s direction. Decades-long icons led the charge of commercial success in 2024. The biggest sales week for hip-hop this year for an album was for a ten-year-old Travis Scott mixtape, and many other artists are clinging onto their reigns through continued emphasis on their classics.

Despite 2010s artists maintaining their spots with not many equally mainstream or beloved successors, it feels like more of the culture’s leaders are in danger than ever. Still, we have to acknowledge a wide spectrum. Diddy–and now Jay-Z–faced abhorrent allegations this year that also dominated engagement, following up on decades of rumors and rumblings with a highly publicized and highly controversial takedown. It’s key context for the Kendrick Lamar and Drake battle and rap’s 2024 as a whole. Salacious criminal activity sold a lot in hip-hop this year, and Hov’s implication means that both “sides” are not free of this burden. Both foundations for criticism are shaky, and we can’t help but feel like the binary is obfuscating some real issues in this shocking scandal. Pair this with the UMG/Spotify petition, and you have an anti-industry movement.

But online, that movement is often about which superstar you support against the other, who “deserves” the crown, and who is more believable. It’s noticeably not about the conditions that hedonistic industry practices impose upon victims, the actual lived experiences of these individuals, the mentalities and mechanisms that drive systemic abuse, or anything that aims to advocate for ending an epidemic rather than getting over the flu just to get mononucleosis for a couple of weeks. Abuse stories are not “gotcha” moments. So our leaders are either taking out each other, reckoning with a steady equalization with other popular music genres, dead, or in jail, whether justifiably or not. With so many questions about where the culture is going right now, these circumstances make answers fewer and farther between, which is a sad and counterintuitive consequence of the biggest rap battle since Jay-Z and Nas.

However, the artistic and social implications of this loss of leaders might run deeper than we know. The high-profile criminal cases of Young Thug and Lil Durk this year caused a lot of skepticism in Atlanta rap and the drill scene, respectively, and these differing situations carry uniquely vague complications. Thugger is out of prison on unclear probation and with a potentially limited musical arsenal, whereas Smurk’s history of philanthropy will no longer define his relationship with street life in the long run in listeners’ eyes. We can’t fully remove accountability from these shifts in legacy, but the social issues they touch on require more nuanced and broad analysis. On the other hand, Kendrick Lamar has the weight of a crusade on him with pushback everywhere he goes, and Drake maintains his dominance while being 2024’s biggest loser. 

As we previously hinted, this wouldn’t be a big issue if the future of hip-hop was more solidly established on a mainstream stage. Yet one of the lingering issues from 2023 is the lack of new superstars in the wake of these leaders losing their luster–although, again, Doechii and many others have us feeling better than last year. Maybe the underground, the true lifeblood of rap, is realizing that the mainstream’s variations of righteousness and bag-chasing are not for them, instead seeking more direct, independent, and self-sustaining success that doesn’t depend on selling out. This means that 2010s stars are entering legend status quickly with less competitive metrics, and that new leading roles like Playboi Carti are that much harder to emulate and live up to–even for himself, apparently. All the context of 2024 raises questions about grand-scale longevity and how an MC can even compete for the throne.

Then again, who wants the throne these days? The volatility of the music industry, in its many forms, might mean that more and more artists shoot for a mid-tier and over-perform rather than trying to get something even close to what Drake’s position entails. Hip-hop fans reward consistency at their core, which is why Vince Staples makes most EOY lists in any given calendar run. Similarly, the culture could start to segment even further into distinctly protective and preservative “philosophies,” especially after a U.S. election year that has many looking out for themselves rather than trusting the system meant to serve their interests. Recent controversies–such as a Kids Take Over hip-hop media event with no Black representation, Justin Hunte’s back-and-forth with What’s The Dirt?, and a recent On The Radar interview with producer EMRLD that bashed soul samples–show this split.

In 2024, the culture seemed to define who is really about hip-hop and who is just looking for solely personal gain. The year, which was defined by beef and many different industry bombshells, created a rocky binary for the mainstream that neither Kendrick Lamar, Drake, or anyone else can reverse the tides of. But this time around, hip-hop’s move toward the underground and possibly exiting the mainstream stage could be much more fruitful. The culture has a chance to focus on truly pertinent issues from a genuinely passionate perspective, and artistically, we’ve never been so well-fed across all levels of rap visibility. As hip-hop leaders fade over time and the culture looks to itself for a banner to raise, it needs to focus on its long-term health, variety, sociocultural power, and values if it wants to keep the true art form’s casket locked away.