Hip-Hop is the New Rock: Roddy Ricch VS. Everyone

"The Box"

Roddy Ricch’s rise and recent success have been a great thing to watch! The meteoric jump from his music is nothing short of amazing. This last week we saw both Roddy’s album and song, "The Box", rise to #1 on their respective charts. What was most impressive was that he beat out Justin Bieber’s comeback single, “Yummy”. This feat was so imposing because Roddy was competing against Justin’s FIRST week sales, with his month and a half old song.

Hip-Hop is Winning

Hip hop has always been a rising genre. However, I believe something like this puts things into perspective. It’s no secret that Bieber is one of the biggest artists in the world. He is used to success with his music. I’m quite sure it came to him as a surprise to see his song putting up such a big fight against “The Box”. It was also a big eye-opener for me that hip- hop had arrived when I saw Bieber instructing his fans on how to stream his song to help ensure him with the #1. It was a desperate move that still didn’t work. Even Roddy himself told his fans, in a tweet, to go stream “Yummy”.

Not only is Roddy's song doing well, but the album is also doing good as well. This was the same scenario with Roddy’s, "Antisocial", VS. Selena Gomez’s, "Rare". This, again, was a case of Roddy's month and half old music competing against a pop artist's first-week sales. This time Selena went even further than Justin. She made a plea on her IG story for fans to stream her album to #1.

Hip-hop has long been an outcast genre. It’s great to see it being embraced at this magnitude. In music, the tides aren’t even changing; they’ve already changed! A pop song isn’t going to get you a quick hit anymore. Today, it's rare to find a mainstream pop album without a hip hop feature. Most of the time, the hip-hop feature doesn’t fit the song. But, labels and artists alike know, if you want streams, you need hip hop. I guess Kanye was right- We are the new rockstars.