The falloff can be difficult to pinpoint. It could be due to a swift decline in sales, a change in career direction, a jail sentence, beef with the label or other personal reasons. An artist may choose to take a sabbatical in search for inspiration. Sometimes their sound sound just grows stale. Legends like Dr. Dre have even admitted to staying dormant in part due to fear of living up to past success.
As our self-conditioning to be in constant search of the next big thing thrives (it’s especially sweet if you can get in on the ground floor so you can brag to your friends down the road, right?), ergo we casually cast aside the heroes from yesteryear. But if the 2018 has taught us anything, it’s that we shouldn’t throw dirt on our the incumbent rap stars so hastily. You know what they say—a setback is just a set up for a comeback. Conventional wisdom will tell you this was a great year for hip-hop, but 2018 should be remembered as the year of the rap comeback, which actually made this year an underwhelming one for the culture.
Of all the comebacks (and there were a ton of them), nobody’s stands out quite like Meek Mill, who saw his transformation come full circle—from budding superstar, to walking punchline, to convicted felon, to symbol of oppression, to sympathetic figure, back into rap star in search of redemption.
Meek was sent back to prison for a bogus parole violation last November, only to be released this past April to a hero’s welcome at a Sixers playoff game; his every move chronicled by ESPN (of all networks) and reported on by Sal Paolantonio.
Pretty remarkable stuff considering Meek’s place in the game. At the time, three studio albums (one platinum, two gold), only one debuting at #1 on the charts, none selling over 250k in its first week, only one award of any kind (Top Rap Album at the 2016 Billboard Music Awards). Meek was on the Intercontinental Champion-level of rap stardom, but he strolled into the Wells Fargo Center like the WWF Champion at SummerSlam.
The best part was witnessing the masses (both public figures and otherwise) execute a complete 180 on the Dreamchaser without even acknowledging it. Remember three years ago when it was all anybody could do to get some jokes off at Meek’s expense after the Drake diss/retaliation debacle? Even the Hamburger Helper hand was roasting Meek! Do we not remember this??? HHSR wrote a story then saying the hate had gone too far, but perhaps the moral of the story here is a crooked system can unite the people behind just about anyone.
Meek Milli capitalized on this momentum with his fourth album, the aptly named Championships on November 30—a dope record with several notable features (including Drake!) and bar after bar about the inequities of our socio-economic and criminal justice systems. Meek deserves the album of the year buzz he’s received, but Championships doesn’t quite rise to that level, even if he was arguably the biggest star of the year.
We also saw the return of Lil Wayne in 2018. Another album of the year candidate, Weezy’s Tha Carter V dropped in late September to many positive reviews. Tunechi appeared far more focused on this project, and rewarded frustrated fans who had waited over three eyars for his last studio LP with Wayne’s vintage lyricism on records like “Can’t Be Broken” and “Mona Lisa”. The album’s final track stole the show though as Wayne and Sampha, behind production that featured brilliant use of tempo, helped illustrate Tune’s struggle with depression. Still, the album should be disqualified from AOTY conversations as C-Five’s first five tracks were all forgettable.
Rap’s biggest lightning rod, Kanye West, returned, and he brought Nas with him. West went all in during a five week stretch of consecutive G.O.O.D. Music (plus Esco) releases spanning May and June. However everything else we heard and saw from Ye, including that shitshow in the Oval Office, undermined the largely disappointing string of seven-song albums. Sure, there were some gems (“Reborn” on Kids See Ghosts comes to mind), but we weren’t left talking about the music. We were left to dissect Kanye’s tiresome antics. Furthermore, G.O.O.D. Music completely botched this mega-rollout anyway.
Part of that botch-job was Nas’ Nasir album, which appeared late on streaming services, and was thumped in the public interest department by the comeback of power-couple Jay Z & Beyoncé, whose Everything Is Love arrived via surprise drop less than 24 hours later. It was hard to discern if this was intentional or not from the outside. Call it collateral damage, but either way The Carters are mighty enough to drop whenever they feel like, and will kick over Nas’ project like Snoop did lil homie’s pillow fort in Baby Boy.
Everything Is Love was enjoyable enough for the general public, but at its core is music for married couples. “APESH*T” left something to be desired, but was serviceable enough as a lead single, while “BOSS” and “BLACK EFFECT” held the summer down. (What’s that like 19 summers now for Jigga?)
Nicki Minaj came back on the scene with her first solo album in FOUR YEARS! Is it any coincidence Queen surfaced four months after a female rapper’s typhoon of a debut album was released to historic sales and critical acclaim? Perhaps Nicki just needed some competition to light a fire under her ample ass, but if so, why did another female emcee need to be the one to do it? Then ensuing war of words, dust ups and stiletto slingings weren’t a great look for Nicki, and stole as much shine from her record as Cardi did herself.
Aside from Meek, Cardi B was probably the best story of the year in hip-hop. The record, the records, the pregnancy, the marriage announcement, the baby, the breakup, the beef…it was all great for business. Invasion of Privacy was a shockingly polished work for someone who made her fame by being the poster-child for lacking refinement. But Cardi hit so hard, her debut was ranked as the #1 album of the year by Rolling Stone and Time, which gives you a glimpse into what 2018 really was for music, specifically hip-hop. Cardi’s album was nice, but it certainly wasn’t the best album of the year for anyone looking beyond an influence on pop culture.
The best rap album of 2018 was Nipsey Hussle’s Victory Lap. First hitting listeners in February, Nip the Crip’s major label debut delivered on the hype and contained more than enough replay value for the ensuing 10 months. If you enjoy measuring albums on the artist’s ability to drop jewels, Victory Lap was worth its weight in gold. Literally every song offered some sort of guiding wisdom on life, business, or general code of ethics, all packaged in Nip’s unique brand of lyricism which drips in truth. The overall sound was appealing to everyone (not just West Coasters) and it was three times as long as Daytona.
Sidebar: Sorry, Push fans. But your record has to be longer than an episode of Young Sheldon in order to qualify for album of the year.
Eminem made another comeback in 2018, and while Kamikaze was light-years ahead of 2017’s Revival, it didn’t quite stick with hardcore rap fans the way Em probably would’ve hoped. And speaking of revivals, Marshall’s beef with Machine Gun Kelly helped resuscitate the Clevelander’s career. But if we’re keeping it a hunid, it may have been the second-most interesting thing Kells did in 2018 after his cameo in Bird Box.
2018 also saw a Dipset reunion, but nobody under the age 30 cared (the album was pretty good…you know, if you’re already a Dipset fan).
Childish Gambino returned to rapping and gifted us the video of the year…with no album to go with it.
You starting to get the picture? 2018 was fascinating because everybody put out music, yet the resulting sounds left a hollow feeling. Perhaps this is a classic case of over-saturation. Apart from all those mentioned above, we got new music from all of game’s biggest stars: Drake, Travis Scott, J Cole, Kendrick Lamar (via the Black Panther Soundtrack), Post Malone, Future, Migos, Rae Sremmurd and Logic. We also got new music from many (what we like to call) professional rappers: Black Thought, Royce da 5’9″, Styles P, Lupe Fiasco, Skyzoo, T.I., Curren$y and Freddie Gibbs. And the new jacks definitely had their time to shine this year: Kodak Black, 6ix9ine, Tory Lanez, Juice WRLD, Trippie Redd, Lil Baby and Gunna, BlocBoy JB and Sheck Wes. Oh, Wiz Khalifa and ASAP Rocky dropped too—slide them into whichever category you wish.
Basically if you didn’t drop something new this year, you looked scared to throw your hat in the ring. And while much of all that was good, was any of the music really that great? The song of the year featured three beats, including two unnecessary beat changes, with the best beat of the bunch getting the shortest amount of airtime. The same two men who collaborated on this song are responsible for the two biggest albums of the year, Scorpion and Astroworld, 42 songs of collective “It’s aight”. That’s 2018 in a nutshell.
We unexpectedly lost a handful of impactful emcees, including Mac Miller, XXXTentacion and Craig Mack. Fab and 6ix9ine got locked up, and the whole world overrated Jay Z’s verse on “What’s Free” (good, but not amazing). The biggest diss record of the year had less to do with Pusha T’s bars than it did his content and cover art. And he still couldn’t put a dent in the Drake wave.
It seems like only small few (Nip, Cardi, LaFlame, etc.) had big years without falling into the “comeback” category. And those who came back helped expand what has quickly become a bloated hip-hop landscape as quantity, not quality, ruled the year. Our sliver lining is that the slate has been pretty much wiped clean. Anyone who wishes to stand out in 2019 will have that chance because so many rappers struggled to cut through the clutter this year.
Is it possible for the entire genre to “come back” in 2019?