An opinion piece for Music Business Worldwide argues that hip-hop's declining chart presence masks a deeper shift rather than a decline: in late October 2025 no rap song featured in the Billboard Hot 100's top 40 for the first time since February 1990, and the genre's US market share has fallen from roughly 30% in 2020 to about 24%. The author, writer Diana Umana, contends that rap's cultural influence – on fashion runways, in brand boardrooms and across youth culture – has never been stronger, meaning commercial scale and cultural relevance have decoupled, particularly among Gen Z artists.

The piece cites Drake's May 2026 feature of underground artist Molly Santana, alongside Future, on his ICEMAN track "Ran To Atlanta" as evidence that the most culturally significant young rappers often lack the biggest streaming or social numbers, instead building influence from the "underground". It draws on MIDiA Research, which argues mainstream itself has become niche: CD-era bestsellers like the Eagles' greatest hits and Michael Jackson's Thriller reached around 17% and 16% of the US population respectively, whereas Taylor Swift's The Tortured Poets Department, the biggest release of its era, reached under 1%, illustrating how monocultural superstardom has become structurally harder to achieve.