Summer 2025 Hip Hop Releases
Hip-Hop has been dying according to critics. I don’t believe so, as the genre has responded in a big way this year. Has hip-hop truly seen a resurgence, or is it merely a passing trend?
In my eyes, hip-hop is just as big as it was five years ago. The popularity may not be there, but I believe the quality of the music released throughout the genre this year has been some of the best albums we’ve had this decade.
An article posted on Newsweek around a year ago titled “Hip-Hop is Declining in Popularity” gives reasons as to why it’s not as popular as it was. The image it portrays, the state of mainstream music, and a drop in its overall percent share in the U.S market dropping since 2020 has slowed growth down drastically since the 2010s.
Although numbers have been down, I have loved a good portion of the music that has been released over the last ten years, with artists constantly evolving their sounds for the better.
When asked if hip-hop is dead, an anonymous student here at Solano College said, “Nope, you just gotta find the right stuff. Alfredo 2 is one of my favorite albums to drop this year and I wish more people listened to it”. I finished my interview by asking if the summer has helped the overall genre, to which he replied, “Yep. Alfredo 2”.
The number of artists who dropped an album this year is nearly a record number in such a short span. Some albums did very well and received great reviews, while others didn’t receive as much credit as we thought they would get.
Travis Scott released “Jackboys 2”, a sequel collaboration album between himself and other artists on his record label “Cactus Jack”. The reviews for Jackboys 2 were not all positive, as some of the songs just didn’t mesh well with each other. Other albums like “Tha Carter VI” by Lil Wayne and “$OME $EXY $ONGS 4 U” by Drake and PartyNextDoor, also received mixed reviews.
On the other hand, albums like “Alfredo 2″ by Freddie Gibbs, “GOD DOES LIKE UGLY” by JID, and “Let God Sort Em Out” by Clipse all received critical acclaim after release. Personally, I loved these projects and believe they all deserve recognition. Once all these projects came out, people started to talk about how much music we’ve gotten in the genre of hip-hop this year and this summer specifically.
I also interviewed an anonymous student from Sacramento State asking the same. He says, “Yeah, dying for sure. There hasn’t been an up and coming rapper in like 6 years, this new generation of rappers is so shit”.
I then asked what he thinks of the latest albums that have come out, to which he stated, “The ones still making music are ones from a decade ago”.
I’d like to disagree because even though the artists are older now, they are still putting out good music for their fans.
Obviously, with all of this evidence, the genre isn’t nearly as popular as it was 10-15 years ago. I still believe there is potential for more popularity with some younger artists starting to gain traction over the last couple years.
The overall quality of the genre will continue to be great as well but like we heard earlier, you just gotta find the right stuff to listen to.