Hip-Hop
Page: 5
Coldplay crowns Billboard’s year-end Top Tours chart. Not far removed, Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band, The Rolling Stones, U2 and Metallica follow in the top 10. Half of the ranking’s upper tier is made up of rock acts, allowing the long-dominant genre to have the biggest piece of the Boxscore pie. Among all dollars earned by 2024’s top 100 touring acts, rock is responsible for 36%, more than any other genre.
Rock’s rule is easily explained by its five acts in the top 10. But among artists between Nos. 11-20 on Top Tours, there is just one more name to add: Eagles at No. 19. Dominated by classic rock acts with chart-topping albums from the 1960s and ‘70s, the genre’s towering lead on stage has shrunk considerably over the course of the 21st century.
For every year but one between 2000-2010, rock acts represented more than 50% of Top Tours revenue, peaking at 68% in 2003. It’s only managed that once in the years since, when U2, Guns N’ Roses and Coldplay lined up at Nos. 1, 2, and 3, respectively, in 2017. Throughout the 2010s and into the 2020s, rock’s share bumped up and down year-to-year, but generally shifted from the majority to the mid-40% range, and now to the mid-30% range.
Watch the clip below to see how the genre makeup of Billboard’s top 100 tours has evolved over the course of the 21st century.
Rock’s share of the top 100 tours is actually up from last year, bumping from 32.4% to 36%. Still, it’s been below 40% for four of the last five years (excluding 2020 and 2021 because of venue closures due to COVID-19), off from an average of 57% throughout the 2000s decade. The genre’s reliance on legendary bands has left a gap as younger acts from other styles elevate to stadium status.
Pop is next in line, with 16.4% of 2024’s top 100 grosses. P!nk, Madonna and Olivia Rodrigo lead the charge, ticking up from last year’s 15.8%. One major caveat is the absence of Taylor Swift and the gargantuan grosses of The Eras Tour. While overall tour figures were published by The New York Times, data was not submitted to Billboard Boxscore for chart eligibility, which means that its earnings are excluded from this equation. It’s estimated that if this year’s grosses were reported, pop would reign supreme with 27-28%, sending rock into the 20%s in both 2023 and 2024.
Pop and rock have been the top two touring genres for every year this century, with the lone exception of 2003, when country music narrowly out-paced pop, 13% to 12.2%. But while they remain on top, the spread has become significantly more even in the post-pandemic years.
Latin music and rap both posted record highs this year, up to 15.8% and 5.7%, respectively. The former hit a new peak in 2022, when Bad Bunny had the year’s biggest tour, becoming the first artist who doesn’t primarily perform in English to earn top year-end honors. While no Latin act has reached those heights since, his stadium success is no longer an anomaly. Luis Miguel grossed $290.4 million this year, and four other Spanish-speaking artists crossed the $100 million threshold. At 5.3% in 2019, Latin artists returned from the pandemic at 12.1% in 2022, then 11.5% in 2023, and now approaching 16% in 2024.
Rap artists have yet to scale their touring business to the extent of their streaming prowess, but this year made quite a dent. The genre’s top-100 share shot from 2.7% to 5.7%, more than doubling its representation and eclipsing its prior peak from 2019. Four women helped push hip-hop’s boundaries, with Doja Cat, Missy Elliott, Megan Thee Stallion and Nicki Minaj outnumbering male rappers on the Top Tours chart for the first time. Plus, Travis Scott scores the genre’s biggest year-end gross ever, at $168 million.
The oscillations of each genre’s performance from one year to the next often comes down to scheduling. Beyoncé’s Renaissance World Tour was impactful enough to shift R&B artists from 5.3% in 2022 to 15.2% in 2023 and back to 5.9% in 2024. But the progression from pop and rock owning a combined 78.5% in 2000 to 52% in 2024 is indicative of gradual growth from a wide variety of diverse artists harnessing the power of their global audiences.
For the first time in Boxscore history, four female rappers land among the year’s top 100 touring artists. Further, women rappers outnumber male rappers for the first time on the all-genre list. Nicki Minaj (No. 30), Doja Cat (No. 61), Missy Elliott (No. 70), and Megan Thee Stallion (No. 76) finish on the year-end Top Tours chart, while closing at Nos. 2, 5, 6, and 7, respectively, on Top Rap Tours.
This year marks the first year with more than one female rapper among the top 100, let alone four. In fact, there had only been four instances of women in hip-hop ever making the all-genre list, dating back to the first year-end roundup in 1991.
Salt-N-Pepa did it first, at No. 53 in 1994 with a gross of $3.9 million, according to figures reported to Billboard Boxscore.
Five years later, fresh off five Grammy wins for her R&B-rap-hybrid The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, the titular rapper was No. 43 with $7.1 million.
Then, two of this year’s group made their debuts: Missy Elliott in 2004, as a co-headliner alongside Beyoncé and Alicia Keys on the Verizon Ladies First Tour ($21.8 million), and Nicki Minaj in 2015 on The Pinkprint Tour ($15.5 million).
That means that representation for female rappers across 34 year-end editions has doubled with just this year’s tally. This count excludes year-end appearances by pop and R&B acts who occasionally rap, such as Beyoncé, Lizzo or SZA.
2024 goes down as a banner year for the touring industry overall, with record grosses surpassing $9 billion among the top 100 artists. And amid that enormous success, rap makes up a bigger piece of the pie than ever before, responsible for 5.7% of those dollars, up from 2.7% last year. The genre’s seven tours in the top 100 matches 2019’s high and improves upon last year’s count of three. Nicki, Doja, Missy and Megan made that possible, not only disrupting hip-hop’s gender monopoly — it’s been nine years since a woman was among rap’s top-100 finalists — but taking over and pushing hip-hop over the edge, outnumbering male rappers for the first time on the all-genre list. Travis Scott (No. 15), $uicideboy$ (No. 48) and 50 Cent (No. 49) round out rap’s representation on the chart.
Minaj is No. 30 on Top Tours with $99.8 million and 712,000 tickets, marking all-time highs for year-end rank, gross and attendance among female rappers, barely outdoing the No. 31 finish for Elliott’s Verizon co-headline 20 years ago. Notably, the Pink Friday 2 World Tour continued beyond the confines of the 2024 tracking period (Oct. 1, 2023 – Sept. 30, 2024), finishing in mid-October with a final gross of $108.9 million from 788,000 tickets, making it the first tour by a female rapper to cross the nine-figure milestone.
Doja Cat and Megan Thee Stallion each made their mark on their debut arena tours. Both acts experienced major breakthroughs in 2020 while concert venues were closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. They scored their first No. 1s on the Billboard Hot 100 just two weeks apart, as “Say So,” hot off a remix with fellow arena titan Nicki Minaj, topped the chart dated May 16, 2020, and “Savage,” boosted by a re-up with rare rap verses by Beyoncé, hit the summit on May 30.
Doja and Megan’s tours reported earnings of $46 million and $40.2 million, respectively, both primarily in the U.S. and Canada, with a sprinkle of European headline shows.
This year also marked the first solo headline tour for Missy Elliott, though it comes nearly 30 years after her debut studio album. Though she wasn’t a road warrior, she amassed major chart success, with six top 20 albums on the Billboard 200 and 10 top 10s on the Hot 100 from 1997-2005.
Beyond hip-hop’s year-end elite, a small handful of female rappers provide promise for the years to come. Ice Spice sold thousands of tickets in Boston, Oakland, and Washington, D.C., while Sexyy Red graduated from clubs last fall (972 tickets in Boston; 1,580 in Richmond, Va.) to arenas, approaching 10,000 tickets in Fort Worth, Texas (9,703 at Dickies Arena on Aug. 30), and Brooklyn (9,631 at Barclays Center on Sept. 17). GloRilla, with eight Hot 100 hits this year, spent hot girl summer as direct support on Megan Thee Stallion’s sold-out trek.
Nicki Minaj, Doja Cat, Missy Elliott and Megan Thee Stallion grossed a combined $227.8 million from 1.7 million tickets across 148 shows in the 2024 tracking window.
A Drake look-alike contest in the rapper’s hometown of Toronto got a boost from the artist himself, who unexpectedly contributed $10,000 to the prize pot. Upon hearing about the themed competition, Drake — who is Billboard’s year-end Top R&B/Hip-Hop Artist — hit up organizer Casuals Cakery on Instagram with a direct message that the bakery […]
GloRilla and Kehlani‘s “Xmas Time” has topped this week’s new music poll that features artists in various genres of music. The holiday collaboration was crowned the favorite new music release by fans in a poll published Friday (Dec. 13) on Billboard. “Xmas Time” garnered nearly 55% of the vote, edging out new music from Stray […]
Travis Scott was joined by a surprise guest Owen Wilson during his headlining set at Rolling Loud Miami 2024.
On Saturday (Dec. 14), the Houston rap star invited the Loki actor to the stage to perform “FE!N” from Scott’s 2023 album Utopia.
Fan-captured footage from the festival, held at Miami Gardens’ Hard Rock Stadium, shows Wilson enthusiastically helping Scott deliver the high-energy track, which peaked at No. 5 on the Billboard Hot 100 in August 2023.
“I’m feigning for more,” Owen shouted to the crowd, wearing a white hoodie, after briefly embracing Scott. The 56-year-old actor then jumped up and down to hype the audience as “FE!N” kicked off.
Explore
Explore
See latest videos, charts and news
See latest videos, charts and news
The surprise appearance comes amid news that Wilson is set to star in Rolling Loud, a film inspired by the annual music festival. The R-rated comedy, which also features comedian Matt Rife, follows an overprotective father (played by Wilson) who attends the festival with his 13-year-old son, a reckless co-worker (Rife) and a festival volunteer, according to Deadline. The film is written and directed by Jeremy Garelick.
It remains unclear if footage of Wilson’s onstage moment with Scott at Rolling Loud Miami will appear in the film.
Trending on Billboard
The cameo added to the excitement surrounding Rolling Loud’s 10th anniversary celebration this year. Along with Scott, the 2024 Miami lineup featured headliners Future and Playboi Carti. Other performers included Metro Boomin, Lil Yachty, Don Toliver, Kodak Black, Sexyy Red, Lil Baby, Bryson Tiller, Shaboozey and Rich The Kid.
Next up, Scott is set to return to Coachella in 2025. In late November, the hip-hop superstar teased that he’ll be giving the festival grounds in Indio, Calif., a Cactus Jack makeover. He also hinted at a “new chapter,” where he’ll debut music from his upcoming era for fans at the Empire Polo Club.
Quando Rondo was sentenced to federal prison Wednesday after pleading guilty to a federal drug offense in Georgia. The rapper, whose given name is Tyquian Terrel Bowman, was sentenced to two years and nine months imprisonment by U.S. District Court judge in his hometown of Savannah, local news outlets reported. Bowman, 25, pleaded guilty in August to […]
Roc Marciano and The Alchemist have decided to do it again. The duo have announced their latest endeavor The Skeleton Key as they look to follow up their critically acclaimed collab album The Elephant Man’s Bones from 2022. And with that announcement, they dropped the project’s lead single in “Chopstick” along with its video. Directed […]
Stephen A. Smith has a message for Drake. During his YouTube series The Stephen A. Smith Show, the sports media personality revealed that the Toronto rapper may be upset with him about previous comments he made about his battle with Kendrick Lamar and that Drake should answer “Not Like Us” with a song instead of […]
The Compton MC has created one of the best catalogs in rap history.
Kendrick Lamar’s surprise album GNX debuts at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart (dated Dec. 7), marking his fifth chart-topper, all earned consecutively. It launches with 319,000 equivalent album units earned in the U.S. in the week ending Nov. 28, according to Luminate — the year’s sixth-largest debut frame. The set’s opening week was largely driven by streaming activity, and the 12-song effort launches with 2024’s third-biggest streaming week for any album. GNX arrived with no warning on Nov. 22 around noon ET.
Explore
Explore
See latest videos, charts and news
See latest videos, charts and news
Also in the top 10 of the latest Billboard 200, the Wicked film soundtrack enters at No. 2, notching the highest debut for a big-screen adaptation of a stage musical ever. The new Wicked film, starring Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande, is based on the long-running stage musical of the same name, which has played on Broadway in New York since 2003.
Trending on Billboard
The Billboard 200 chart ranks the most popular albums of the week in the U.S. based on multi-metric consumption as measured in equivalent album units, compiled by Luminate. Units comprise album sales, track equivalent albums (TEA) and streaming equivalent albums (SEA). Each unit equals one album sale, or 10 individual tracks sold from an album, or 3,750 ad-supported or 1,250 paid/subscription on-demand official audio and video streams generated by songs from an album. The new Dec. 7, 2024-dated chart will be posted in full on Billboard‘s website on Tuesday (Dec. 3). For all chart news, follow @billboard and @billboardcharts on both X, formerly known as Twitter, and Instagram.
Of GNX’s 319,000 first-week equivalent album units, SEA units comprise 285,000 (equaling 379.72 million on-demand official streams of the set’s 12 songs; it debuts at No. 1 on Top Streaming Albums), album sales comprise 32,000 (it was only available as a widely available standard digital download, in both a clean and explicit edition; it debuts at No. 2 on Top Album Sales), and TEA units comprise 2,000.
GNX scores 2024’s sixth-largest opening week, by equivalent album units, among all albums. Further, with 379.72 million on-demand official streams generated by its songs, the album yields the year’s biggest streaming week for any R&B/hip-hop album. Further, among all albums, it logs the year’s second-biggest debut streaming week, and the year’s third-largest streaming week overall. (The year’s two bigger streaming weeks were the first and second weeks of Taylor Swift’s The Tortured Poets Department, with 891.37 and 428.54 million, respectively.)
Lamar previously led the Billboard 200 with Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers (2022), DAMN. (2017), Untitled Unmastered (2016) and To Pimp a Butterfly (2015). Earlier in 2024, he nabbed a pair of No. 1s on the Billboard Hot 100 songs chart with his solo cut “Not Like Us” (in May), shortly after he led the list with the co-billed collaboration “Like That” (in April) with Future and Metro Boomin. Neither song is included on GNX.
GNX precedes Lamar headlining turn at the upcoming Super Bowl halftime show on Feb. 9, 2025, in New Orleans. He was announced as the star act of the festivities on Sept. 8. It will mark his second appearance at the halftime show, following the all-star 2022 hip-hop showcase with Dr. Dre at the helm.
The Wicked film soundtrack takes a bow at No. 2 on the Billboard 200, the highest debut ever by a big-screen adaptation of a stage musical.
The last time a stage-to-screen musical soundtrack debuted in the top five was when Chicago danced in at No. 4 — over 21 years ago, on the Feb. 1, 2003 chart — on its way to a No. 2 peak a week later. Setting aside debut ranks, the last stage-to-screen movie musical soundtrack to reach the top two was Les Miserables, which spent a week at No. 1 on the Jan. 19, 2013-dated chart. (It debuted at No. 33, and then moved to No. 2 and No. 1 in its second and third weeks.)
Among all soundtracks in 2024, Wicked is the second soundtrack to reach the top 10 for the first time this year, and the highest charting, following Twisters (No. 7 peak) in August.
Wicked launches with 139,000 equivalent album units earned in the week ending Nov. 28 — the biggest week for a full-length theatrical film soundtrack since Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper’s A Star Is Born earned 143,000 units in its second week (Oct. 17, 2018, chart; down from its 162,000 bow). Wicked also logs the biggest week for any stage-to-screen musical soundtrack since the Billboard 200 began ranking titles by equivalent album units in December 2014.
Of Wicked’s opening-week sum, album sales comprise 85,000 (it’s No. 1 on Top Album Sales, SEA units comprise 52,000 (equaling 67.66 million on-demand official streams of the album’s tracks; it’s No. 4 on Top Streaming Albums) and TEA units comprise 2,000. With 67.66 million streams generated by its songs, Wicked has 2024’s biggest streaming week for any soundtrack, and the largest streaming week ever for a stage-to-screen musical film soundtrack.
Wicked’s first-week album sales score the largest sales week for a full-length theatrical film soundtrack since A Star Is Born’s second week (86,000). Wicked has the largest debut sales week for a stage-to-screen musical film since Dreamgirls opened with 92,000 (Dec. 23, 2006 chart). The last time a stage-to-screen musical film soundtrack sold more than Wicked this past week was when Les Miserables reached No. 1 on the Billboard 200 with 93,000 in its third chart week (Jan. 19, 2013, chart).
Wicked’s opening week sales were bolstered by its availability across six vinyl variants (including a signed edition, autographed by Erivo and Grande), four CD variants (including a signed edition) and a standard digital download album.
Sabrina Carpenter‘s chart-topping Short n’ Sweet rises 5-3 on the Billboard 200 (69,000 equivalent album units; down 4%); Tyler, The Creator’s former No. 1 CHROMAKOPIA falls 3-4 (61,000; down 24%) and Billie Eilish’s Hit Me Hard and Soft rounds out the top five, rising 9-5 with 50,000 (up 2%).
Gracie Abrams’ The Secret of Us steps 8-6 (48,000 equivalent album units; down 5%); Rauw Alejandro’s Cosa Nuestra falls 6-7 (44,000; down 35% in its second week); Swift’s former leader The Tortured Poets Department climbs 11-8 (43,000; up 1%); Morgan Wallen’s chart-topping One Thing at a Time ascends 12-9 (42,000; up 2%); and Chappell Roan’s The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess is a non-mover at No. 10 (42,000; down 2%).
Luminate, the independent data provider to the Billboard charts, completes a thorough review of all data submissions used in compiling the weekly chart rankings. Luminate reviews and authenticates data. In partnership with Billboard, data deemed suspicious or unverifiable is removed, using established criteria, before final chart calculations are made and published.