Let’s begin by thanking Spotify for the great utility of their plentiful playlists. For instance, in the Running section of the app, the pop playlists are broken down into ’00s pop, ’10s pop, and even ’90s pop — this one goes hard for those middle miles.
Anyway, it seems like their hip-hop curation team, Rap Caviar, has decided to break down their own genre in a similar way, by organizing it into decades. That seems fine, except, they also decided to tap into the ongoing greatest-of-all-time conversation by actually painting a “Rap Mount Rushmore” mural in various cities. They also chose to break their Rushmore down into just the 2010s, selecting Kendrick Lamar, Drake, Nicki Minaj, and J. Cole. Which is exactly where things might get a little messier.
First of all, I have great respect for Nicki Minaj and believe she’s an incredibly important MC, but her greatest sphere of influence was definitely waning around 2015. By the time Queen hit, she wasn’t very influential at all. So putting her on the mountain when other massive names like Future, Young Thug, Tyler The Creator, Travis Scott and even Kanye himself are all let off is pretty alarming for even a casual rap listener. She might be there due to the fact that she called out a similar Rushmore on Twitter for not including her, but hey, desire isn’t achievement.
The fact that there’s no southern rap (no, J. Cole doesn’t count) is another issue some might find contentious! Anyway, at least they got Kendrick right.
