The 1990s began with the biggest commercial draws hip-hop had seen up to that point in pop-rappers MC Hammer and Vanilla Ice. (They’d do so five more times in the 1990s.) Drake has four Top Ten hits on Scorpion alone. Public Enemy’s singles that decade never reached Top 40 Salt-N-Pepa, which was obviously more of a pop act, “only” hit the Top 40 twice in the 1980s. However, even they didn’t dominate the pop charts in the way a hip-hop star can in the 2010s. Other platinum-sellers during that decade included Salt-N-Pepa, N.W.A., and Public Enemy, but the decade belonged to Run-D.M.C. 6 on the Hot 100 in the fall of 1986.Īlong with The Beastie Boys and LL Cool J, Run-D.M.C.’s reign was an affirmation of rap music as a potent commercial force, though the Beasties had hip-hop’s best-selling album of the 1980s with 1986’s diamond-certified Licensed To Ill.
were harbingers for what was to come, knocking out MTV-friendly singles like “Rock Box” and “King of Rock” even before the chart-busting Aerosmith collab “Walk This Way” shot to No. With their groundbreaking success, Run-D.M.C. More than anyone, the Queens-bred trio proved that hip-hop could be hugely viable as a commercial genre. became the first hip-hop act to go gold and platinum, as well as the first to be on the cover of Rolling Stone. In the 1980s, being the biggest act in hip-hop meant standing at the forefront of a coming cultural revolution. How does that compare to his predecessors? Drake has been the commercial king of the post-streaming era. Most significantly for hip-hop, rappers are among the biggest pop stars of the past two decades, and in the 2010s, that means a historically unrivaled level of cultural visibility. Streaming has reshaped the landscape for artists and fans of popular music, and the kind of starpower that happens in the age of social media and 24-hour connectivity is a new kind of beast. As such, being the biggest rapper in the game means something entirely different now than it meant 30 years ago, or even 10 years ago. The Billboard 200 chart ranks the most popular albums of each week based on a combination of traditional album sales, track equivalent albums (TEA), and streaming equivalent albums (SEA), accounting for the evolving methods of consumption for contemporary music.