Mainstream Rap Is Suffocating In A Big Three Vortex

“Mainstream rap’s” twilight is an incessant rap-triangle drama

The Kendrick-Drake battle is the most fun that we should never have again. It was an unprecedented spectacle, but, as Jay-Z stated, the fallout has some people wishing it had never happened. Their stans are still at feverish odds, possessed by an angry delirium as if they haven’t slept since the “Family Matters” vs. “Meet The Grahams” night. I saw a since-deleted tweet where a Kendrick stan replied to a tweet about J. Cole doing Cam’ron’s Talk With Flee show by happily implying that it was going to take away Drake’s ICEMAN buzz; this is how deranged it’s gotten. The major label rap orbit has been engulfed by a Big 3 vortex, with seemingly no escape.

Few rappers can keep the world’s attention like Drake, Kendrick Lamar, and J. Cole. The DSP algorithms have turned rap music into a collective of microscenes full of niche phenoms. Very few post-2018 (or so) acts are platinum-sellers who can headline an arena show. Major labels are systematically divesting from rap. Hip-hop is gradually going back underground, and it’s a wonderful thing. The Big Three might as well be the Final Three; no rap superstars, as we currently define the term, are coming behind them. Mainstream rap still refers to anything in the major label system, but its cultural dominance over other scenes is rapidly dwindling. The “Big Three’s” latter years have relegated the final chapter of “mainstream rap” to a rap-triangle drama concocted for the satisfaction of stans, podcasters, “content creators,” and everyone else more interested in filling their free time with conspiracy theories and gossip than music discovery.