Dead Rappers Dominate Spotify's Top 10 Hottest Rap Albums 
The list is full of albums by artists you would expect: Drake, Kendrick Lamar, Travis Scottand other celebrities.
The scary thing about this list is that half of the Top 10 albums,including the #1 album, are XXXTentacion, Juice WRLD or Pop Smoke, all of whom have sadly died in recent years before they die even 22 years. Two XXXTentacion albums, 2017's 17 and 2018?, made the Top 10, and the last one on the list. Juice WRLD's 2018 debut album Goodbye & Good Riddance and 2020 posthumous album Legends Never Die both cracked the Top 10, while 2019's Death Race For Love landed at No. 13. Finally, Pop Smoke's posthumous 2020 album Shoot For The Stars Aim For the Moon also made the Top 10 while his mixtape Meet The Woo 2 landed at No. 37.
Other names that frequent thislist are famous ones. Drake has three Top 10 and eight Top 50 albums (16% of the total list). Eminem has six Top 50 albums,Kendrick Lamar has three Top 25 albums, and Kanye West has three Top 50 albums. Much has been made of the fact that hip-hop hasn't had a No. 1 song or album this year so far — the first since 1993 — and whether the genre is on the decline.
The number 1 rap album number may be broken as soon as Lil Uzi Vert's The Pink Tape Number arrives next week - ifnot, it will be broken as soon asDrake drops for All Dogs and Travis returns with Utopia. After all, Uzi, Drake and Travis are some of the biggest stars in music right now.
Still, Spotify's list emphasizeshow different the hip-hop landscape would be if young artists like XXX, Pop and Juice were still alive and playing. Just this week, Juice WRLD's Cordae collaboration "Doomsday"debuted at No. 58 on the Billboard chart, inspired in partby a music video in which Cole Bennet uses AI to manipulatehis face.
XXXTentacion has 10 songs on Spotify with over a billion streams - for comparison, Taylor Swift has one. The biggest rapstar (and most reliable hitter) of2023 is Ice Spice, an artist who emerged from the same New York music scene that Pop Smoke helped start.
All of these late artists have had their fair share of controversy,especially XXX, but there's no denying their musical impact and lasting impact. You couldargue that their posthumous fame sparked new interest in their work, especially their posthumous releases, but Death spreads rap in a way that other genres don't.
We have lost many stars and would be stars in the last fewyears and I am afraid to list them all because the last time I did I had to update my bookbecause someone was killedanother rapper before I can post it. The reason why so many rappers die is a mystery, although there is always a system of racism.
Whatever the reason, the fact is that we are here. Maybe hip-hop is failing, maybe not. In order for the genre to continue to thrive and grow, it needs new, experimental and charismatic stars. Pop, Juiceand XXX are all of those things. And now they are gone. Does this mean the death of a species? Well, hip-hop has beenin that situation before; in 1997, The Notorious B.I.G. was shot just six months after 2Pac's death. Rap has lost two iconic stars. Still, the genre managed to reach new heights in the late 90s and 2000s. Rap seems to have stopped in 2017 as the era of media is fully functional and the singers used it well. This isalso why Spotify's list is based on artists from 2010 (Spotify was created in the US in 2011). In fact, there are only two albums in the Spotify Top 50 ofthe 90s. The oldest album on the list is from 1996's All Eyez On Me by 2Pac. Some legends never die.