As the world at large is busy looking back and examining the year that was in 2017, Orbitz has issued a new data visualizer that will help put 2016 more in context from a rap trends perspective. The bottom line is that last year was the real moment when hip-hop began to take over the mainstream music scene. It didn't just have a good year as a music genre, it had an unprecedented one.
According to their report, hip-hop music made up 30 percent of Billboard's Hot 100 singles, the high total that stats compilers have ever seen. Though pop music itself had a slight uptick compared to the year before, that genre came in at just 37 percent, a mere hair in front of rap music. The previous peaks had been in 1994 and 2015, where hip-hop made up 21 percent of the chart's hits. The data visualizer pulls from information that dates all the way back to 1958, fifteen years before hip-hop was birthed as a genre in 1973. Check out the multi-faceted comparison below.
While this representation of the data discussed does have some glitches therein, such as the notion that hip-hop had any percentage of the Hot 100 hits prior to 1973, but those don't distract from the overall message, which is that rap is here to stay as mainstream music's new foundation. If the numbers looked this good for rap a year ago, the outlook can only be a positive one for the data that one will eventually glean from 2017's music chart activity.
Want the scoop on what we thought the hottest songs of 2017 were? Check out our complete list here.