You may or may not have heard, but it seems that hip hop is not doing super crazy on the charts right now, as the top 40 currently is just devoid of it completely. This seems to just be worrying a lot of people to death at the moment, especially since this is the first time this has happened since, I guess, the 1990s.

First off, this may just be the effect of some really big pop albums having dropped recently. You have artists like Taylor Swift who are basically taking up numerous spots in the top 40 right now through Life of a Showgirl. Just what it is. That is just how massively popular she is in this moment.

But then, in addition to that, you have a lot of hip-hop's solid hit-makers of the past 10-plus years, pretty much slipping in terms of commercial relevance. Either that or it's been a minute since they've come out with something. If that is the case, I don't know, so be it.

If anything, seeing rap music slip commercially for a short period of time could be good for the genre, could encourage artists and listeners to not listen to music with fucking calculators and decide what is good and what is hot and what is not based upon however many streams it's getting on any given day — which is just about one of the worst deciders you could use to pick what is of artistic merit and what isn't.

Maybe instead, once we stop worrying about the numbers and who is doling out hits, we can actually just start listening to the music again and deciding what's good and what's not based on just how it sounds and how it appeals to us personally. I mean, a lot of the newer, younger artists out there, including some of these rage kids, they're just making music for their niche and their audience that wants to hear that sound. They can't give a fuck about what has pop appeal.

And while I'm not saying other artists should follow suit and do exactly what they're doing, maybe instead they should follow a similar ethos and ask themselves, What is it I want to hear? Screw the charts. What are those sorts of sounds, aesthetics, and songwriting ideas that I personally think are exciting? And let me chase after that instead of worrying about what's going to result in a hit.