Kendrick Lamar, performing in Los Angeles in June, was among the many most essential and inescapable voices in any style of music in 2024.
Timothy Norris/Getty Photos
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Timothy Norris/Getty Photos
Kendrick Lamar, performing in Los Angeles in June, was among the many most essential and inescapable voices in any style of music in 2024.
Timothy Norris/Getty Photos
Report-breaking mainstream hits. A brand new era of artists rising to grab their second. Rappers out and in of courts. A pair of the most important names within the sport remodeling their careers by taking their rivalry to typically bitter new heights. In 2024, hip-hop introduced us wave upon wave of huge, stunning, culture-shifting moments.
NPR Music’s Sheldon Pearce, Sidney Madden and Rodney Carmichael have been watching and listening all 12 months lengthy, they usually’ve gathered collectively to elucidate a very powerful tales of hip-hop’s 51st 12 months. There was the ascendance of latest dominant voices in Southern rap, a lot of them feminine, together with the noticeable resonance, for a lot of artists within the style, with nation music. The disconcerting trial of Younger Thug left a void in Atlanta — the longtime hip-hop capital — for a lot of the 12 months, earlier than it ended instantly and dramatically. And sure, there was the outstanding present placed on by Kendrick Lamar in his sustained assault on Drake.
Plus: Rodney, Sidney and Sheldon share their favourite hip-hop albums of the 12 months. Hip-hop might have celebrated its landmark fiftieth anniversary in 2023 by wanting again at its personal historical past, however in 2024, it shot ahead like a cannon blast.
