(Left) Drake, shown here at the Fox Theatre on Oct. 6, 2010, will play Atlanta in September. Credit: Hyosub Shin/AJC via TNS (Right) Kendrick Lamar performs during the 2023 Governors Ball Music Festival at Flushing Meadows Corona Park in New York on June 11, 2023. Credit: Yuki Iwamura/AFP via Getty Images via TNS
This story is the second installment of a three-part series discussing major changes in popular music throughout the course of 2024. Today’s story focuses on the current state of rap music.
This year will go down as one of the most important years for popular music in the past decade.
Since Jan. 1, listeners have seen — or rather, heard — popular music rapidly change and set the tone for years to come. One major shift has occurred in rap music, in which two of the biggest artists on the planet went head to head in a battle for the ages, whereas younger artists established new sounds for the future.
Two names have remained prominent in hip-hop since the early 2010’s: Aubrey “Drake” Graham and Kendrick Lamar.
Throughout the course of the past decade, the pair has released catchy, powerful anthems that have paved the way for new artists, but to see the two battle in arguably the defining “rap beef” of Gen Z has certainly been a sight to witness.
Jason Rawls, assistant professor of hip-hop at Ohio State, said despite the feud’s potentially negative connotation, the rap genre inherently benefits from this kind of conflict.
“Competition is good for the culture,” Rawls said. “It’s good to have your titans go at it because it shows you, ‘Hey, who’s the best? I’m the best.’ Everybody’s going to want to claim the crown, right? And if you want to claim the crown, you have to defend the crown.”
Beyond its more symbolic significance, Rawls said the music created from the artists’ tension is genuinely fun for fans to listen to.
“Yes, they were both making music that was impactful, and obviously they’re saying things that are terrible and hurtful to a certain extent, but that’s kind of the fun of it,” Rawls said. “But their music is still so authentically their own, and it’s so different.”
Even so, Rawls said the rivalry carries a negative undertone, which is the possibility of the feud going too far — something seen in the 1990s with the East Coast v. West Coast battle.
“There’s so many examples of it, and different examples, and it’s interesting, you know, they’re all pretty similar in the fact that it’s about defending the crown, showing who’s the best,” Rawls said. “And so, I don’t think that’s a bad thing for their culture, but we just have to make sure it doesn’t go too far.”
Though Lamar and Drake’s battle will be discussed by hip-hop enthusiasts for decades, it was not the only memorable musical moment of 2024.
Throughout the past few years, music listeners have seen the rise of a new, chaotic kind of rap, aptly titled ‘rage music.’
This sound’s main influences primarily come from two artists: Travis Scott and Playboi Carti.
Derrick Hill, local DJ and employee at Rich St. Records, said this new sound has the same energy and appeal as punk did when it first emerged.
“It was the energy of it, and it was the live experience too,” Hill said. “It wasn’t just the music, like listening to it, it was like going out and experiencing it, and I think that’s what that brings to the table.”
Hill said seeing this music live is the truest way to understand its appeal.
“It’s that vibe you can really, honestly, only get if you’re outside in a concert, and I mean it, to me, [what] makes sense is getting that energy out, getting that rage out,” Hill said.
Jacob Kogan, a third-year in biology and president of the Ohio State Hiphop Club, and Noah Bennett, a third-year in computer science and engineering and the club’s vice president, said for younger audiences, the sound has resonated with them because of artists like Carti’s adaptability.
“I think [Carti’s] done really well,” Kogan said. “He’s changed his sound dramatically, and you can clearly tell there’s large differences between his first album and his last one, with the more metallic and rock-heavy sound.”
Another strength of Carti, Kogan said, is his ability to release new styles of music, even if it doesn’t resonate with people.
“If you’re going to change your style, I think it’s inevitable that you’re going to release music that people don’t really resonate with, and with “Whole Lotta Red,” Carti’s last album, a lot of people didn’t like it at first, and then it grew on people,” Kogan said. “So, honestly, I think artistically, if you release something that’s, like, completely adored right away, it’s maybe not a classic.”
Bennett agreed and said it’s a strength of artists to make music that doesn’t cater to any singular fanbase.
“I don’t think that artists today tend to cater to any type of group when they create their music,” Bennett said. “I think they make their music with their own sound in mind, and sometimes that can happen to cater to younger people, and sometimes that can happen to cater to older people.”
Though it may sometimes seem that rap is growing stagnant and the genre is fading, Bennett said he believes younger artists are finding new ways to hit the mainstream.
“I would say that it is a little bit more difficult now, with the rise of social media for a newer artist to establish themselves,” Bennett said. “And a lot of these younger artists who, like, came into the game have kind of switched directions [with] what type of music they’re doing — I know The Kid Laroi is one good example.”
Bennett said Laroi began his career firmly rooted in rap music, but has since shifted to a more pop-like sound.
Bennett and Kogan agreed rap will continue to be a musical escape for people facing problems in their lives.
“It’s a new, interesting sound that people enjoy,” Kogan said. “And it’s just, it’s kind of something you can do and listen to outside of what’s going on in the world.”
