No Rap Songs Are in the Billboard Hot 100’s Top 40 for the First Time Since 1990

With Kendrick Lamar and SZA’s 13-week Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 “Luther” falling off the Hot 100 dated Oct. 25, 2025, there were officially no rap songs in the chart’s top 40 last week.

{snip}

The last time before that when there were zero rap songs in the top 40 of the Hot 100? You have to go back all the way back to Feb. 2, 1990, when the top-ranking rap song was Biz Markie’s eventual top 10 hit “Just a Friend,” which had just climbed to No. 41 on the chart. The next week, “Just a Friend” jumped to 29, starting a Hot 100 streak of rap songs in the top 40 that would last for the next 35 years, eight months and three weeks.

{snip}

However, with “Luther” and seven other songs in the Hot 100’s top 40 going recurrent on the Oct. 25 chart following the rule change, there was also extra opportunity for songs below them on the chart to rebound into the top 40, or to reach it for the first time. No rap songs were close enough to the threshold to be able to make that jump. (Also in the way: all 12 songs from Taylor Swift’s new album, The Life of a Showgirl, have been lodged in the top 40 the past three weeks, further limiting room for rap hits in the region.)

The lack of rap songs in the Hot 100’s top 40 is the latest sign of a recent dip in rap’s commercial dominance. Hip-hop’s overall market share reached a peak in 2020, when it neared 30%. That had slipped to just over 25% in 2023, and has been at 24% so far in 2025, through the week of Oct. 23. In the Hot 100 chart for the equivalent chart week five years ago (dated Oct. 24, 2020), a whopping 16 of the top 40 were rap songs, while in the equivalent chart two years ago (Oct. 28, 2023) there were eight rap songs in the top 40.

{snip}

On this week’s Hot 100 (dated Nov. 1, 2025), the rap song-less streak is extended to a second week, as once again no rap songs rate in the chart’s top 40. {snip}