Sony Pixel Power calrec Sony

Every Trap at Once: Ten Years in Rap Trends

03/12/2018

Since Spotify launched a decade ago, hip-hop has splintered into countless new directions-and streaming culture has only intensified the process. Streaming platforms have become a core part of the music's story: They're not just shaping the listener's experience, they're informing the sounds and styles of the music itself. But attempting to trace the path of this decade of evolution-in any straightforward way, at least-is enough to give anyone a headache. Hip-hop isn't just one genre; it's hundreds of subgenres, forming one hectic, complicated whole.

The gulf between hip-hop's biggest stars and its lesser-known names has never been wider, yet previously unknown artists can blow up overnight on the momentum of a song they uploaded themselves. Regional rap scenes that were once only for insiders have become the backbone of the mainstream. And thanks to the internet's everything-at-once-ness, trends often seem to shift in the blink of an eye.

It's a lot to process. Enter Glenn McDonald, Spotify's data alchemist ; in essence, his job is to translate a practically infinite set of cold, hard data-millions of streams, saves, playlists, and beyond-into a reflection of the human experience of listening to music. Applying the rigorous approach of a data scientist to the perspective of a music critic, he can not only identify existing patterns, but catch new genres as they emerge.

Behold McDonald's passion project, Every Noise At Once. The site is a sprawling, hyper-detailed index of genres, from massive umbrellas like hip-hop or country to the nichest of micro-genres you never knew existed. (Deep discofox, anyone?) Through a combination of machine learning, Spotify's music intelligence division, and McDonald's own analysis (plus a bit of creative license when it comes to coining new genre names), the site currently identifies and indexes a whopping 2,215 genres. Click on the map for hip hop and you'll find yourself entangled in a dense web of associated artists from across Spotify's database; seen in list form, you can trace the degree of overlap with other genres. You can also branch out into nerdcore or old school nederhop, each accompanied by a representative playlist. It's not just a data map of Spotify users' listening habits, it's a visual deep-dive into how trends emerge and evolve.

Using Every Noise's data-along with some additional information from McDonald, including the rough number of artists per individual genre and the amount of both casual and serious listeners-we've identified the five most significant trends in the past decade of hip-hop, alongside playlists to explore. It's a means of articulating all the subtleties of the ever-changing culture, at least before the next offshoot is born.

Trap Music 350 major core artists, 3500 relevant artists

10 million serious listeners, 40 million casual listeners

Back when Spotify emerged, trap music had just barely begun to cross over into the mainstream. Mid- 00s pioneers like Jeezy and T.I. had made their mark on the charts, but in most parts of the country, trap hadn't had much sway on the sound of popular rap. That'd soon change: Gucci Mane was gearing up to release his breakthrough album, 2009's unexpectedly pop-friendly The State vs. Radric Davis; meanwhile, the popularity of down-South subgenres like crunk and snap music in the mid and late 00s had brought regional rap trends to mainstream prominence. The burgeoning popularity of streaming music doubtlessly played a part in the way the sound of Southern street rap came to influence hip-hop at large: With control in the hands of the users, what was once at the periphery moved toward the center.

As expected, Every Noise At Once shows a significant amount of overlap between what's considered trap music-which runs the gamut from Jeezy to Waka Flocka Flame to Future to BlocBoy JB-and what falls under the similar categories of southern hip hop and dirty south rap. (There are even further subsections of those categories: Deep trap appears to focus on relatively lesser-known artists, like Nashville's Starlito and DC's Fat Trel, where the even more specific deep southern trap skews toward Baton Rouge rappers like Boosie, Webbie, and Kevin Gates.) But it's equally unsurprising that, within the scope of all that's considered rap on the site, trap and its related offshoots take up significant real estate near the top of the list: In 2018, trap music is the sound of popular hip-hop.

Emo Rap / Vapor Trap Emo rap: 250 major artists, 900 relevant artists

280k serious listeners, 6 million casual listeners

Vapor trap: 300 major artists, 2000 relevant artists

1 million serious listeners, 10 million casual listeners

Odds are you've never heard the term vapor trap before. The term is one of many that McDonald intuitively coined in order to more precisely identify genres as they form in real time. (See also: escape room, slow game, electrofox.) But its artist map and associated playlist is immediately recognizable to anyone who's acquainted with the movements often referred to as Soundcloud rap or emo rap that have dominated streaming sites and, increasingly, the Billboard charts in recent years. The artists indexed here have significant overlap with those grouped under Every Noise's emo rap category, though its most central acts-Lil Peep, XXXTENTACION, Yung Lean-do skew further toward guitar-driven interpolations of alt-rock, emo, and grunge than those listed as vapor trap. Still, they are easily understood together-the sound of a new generation of rap forming a newer, more lawless canon.

The burgeoning scene's marquee artists and songs-think Lil Xan, Wifisfuneral, and Ski Mask The Slump God, alongside slightly older internet-rap predecessors like Denzel
LINK: https://newsroom.spotify.com/2018-12-03/every-trap-at-once-ten-years-i...
See more stories from spotify

Most recent headlines

05/01/2027

Worlds first 802.15.4ab-UWB chip verified by Calterah and Rohde & Schwarz to be demoed at CES 2026

Worlds first 802.15.4ab-UWB chip verified by Calterah and Rohde & Schwarz to be ...

06/09/2026

Dolby and MagentaTV Bring Fans Closer to the FIFA World Cup 2026 in Germany with Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos

June 9 2026, 23:00 (PDT) Dolby and MagentaTV Bring Fans Closer to the FIFA Worl...

04/08/2026

Dalet Announces Commercial Availability of Dalia, Bringing Media-Aware Agentic AI to Enterprise Productions

Dalet, a leading technology and service provider for media-rich organizations, t...

04/07/2026

Detective Conan: Fallen Angel of the Highway Opens in Dolby Cinemas Across Japan, Presented in Dolby Atmos and Dolby ...

April 7 2026, 19:00 (PDT) Detective Conan: Fallen Angel of the Highway Opens in...

22/06/2026

Behind the Mic: SportsCenters Lisa Cohn to Retire This June From ESPN as Longest-Tenured Anchor

Behind The Mic provides a roundup of recent news regarding on-air talent, includ...

22/06/2026

Cosm Appoints David Ho as Chief Legal Officer

Cosm has announced the appointment of David Ho as Chief Legal Officer, a newly created executive role reporting to President and CEO Jeb Terry. Ho will oversee ...

22/06/2026

Warner Bros. Discovery and AWS Announce AI-Powered Advertising Technology Platform

Warner Bros. Discovery and Amazon Web Services (AWS) have announced the developm...

22/06/2026

Daktronics Completes Audio Control System Upgrade at Petco Park for San Diego Padres

Daktronics has completed an audio control system upgrade at Petco Park in San Di...

22/06/2026

Accelerate Media Names John Willi President, Launches Accelerate Sports Network

Accelerate Media has named John Willi as President and announced the launch of the Accelerate Sports Network (ASN), a prep sports media and streaming platform c...

22/06/2026

AWSN to Air 3XBA Womens Basketball Tournament Live June 26-27

All Women's Sports Network (AWSN) and 3XBA (3 3 Basketball Association) have announced live television coverage of the annual 3XBA tournament on Friday, Jun...

22/06/2026

OWL AI Appoints Jay Prasad as Chief Executive Officer

OWL AI has announced the appointment of Jay Prasad as Chief Executive Officer and member of the Board of Directors. Prasad succeeds Josh Gwyther, who has served...

22/06/2026

CP Communications Provides RF Support for Inside the NBA at 2026 NBA Finals

CP Communications delivered RF video and audio support for TNT's Inside the NBA at the 2026 NBA Finals, providing main show coverage in San Antonio and ea...

22/06/2026

Polymarket and GRID Partner to Integrate Esports Data and Streaming into Trading Platform

Polymarket has announced a partnership with GRID, an official esports data platf...

22/06/2026

SVG New Sponsor Spotlight: Metinteractive's Rachel Mele, Ken Cyr on Building Technology Backbones for Sports Venues

As sports venues continue to evolve into more video-centric, fan-engagement-driv...

22/06/2026

SVG All-Stars: Corbin Perkins, Chief Engineer, Victory+

As the regional sports production scene shifts toward streaming, this Texan helps lead the engineering behind Victory+'s growing live platform...

22/06/2026

Meet the 2026 Sundance Institute Documentary Edit Intensive Fellows

By Kristin Feeley, Director, Documentary Film & Artist Programs the memories of your elders [are] a scaffolding for you to build your identity on - and t...

22/06/2026

Blade joins CEDAR Audio Icons line-up

New hyper-resolution analyser EQ revealed CEDAR Audio's all-new Icons plug-in series has just gained its newest member, Blade. Described by the compan...

22/06/2026

Sampleson release Aeronaut

Turn any live input into a cinematic soundscape Designed for use in the studio and on stage, Sampleson's latest creation is capable of taking any audio ...

22/06/2026

ADDAC System's new Four Strings Series

Adds guitar strings to Eurorack rigs ADDAC System are renowned for their weird and wonderful synth designs, and their line-up includes plenty of gear that&#...

22/06/2026

FIFA World Cup 2026 fever grows, as more than one third of Australians tune in to SBS coverage

FIFA World Cup 2026 fever grows, as more than one third of Australians tune in ...

22/06/2026

NAGRA Venturi - Turning Piracy Intelligence into Measurable Business Impact

In our latest blog, Tim Pearson explores NAGRA Venturi, the new streaming security solution for the AI era from NAGRAVISION. Designed to aggregate and analyze ...

22/06/2026

Xumo Expands Contextual Targeting Capabilities Through Gracenote and IRIS.TV Integrations

Expanded integrations give advertisers access to distinct contextual signals acr...

22/06/2026

Greg Garmon Joins Imagine as Senior VP, Americas Video Sales

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

22/06/2026

Kaleidescape Breaks the 8K and 4:4:4 Barriers

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

22/06/2026

Xilica introduces Dynamic Voice Lift in new Designer

Xilica today announced the release of Dynamic Voice Lift, a new feature in Xilica Designer v4.12 that brings adaptive speech reinforcement to large meeting spac...

22/06/2026

Official trailer released for Katie Price: Nothing to Hide, coming to Sky and NOW on 8 July

Monday 22 June 2026 Official trailer released for Katie Price: Nothing to Hide,...

22/06/2026

Eco Wave Power Turns Waves Into Watts With NVIDIA AI Infrastructure and Digital Twins

The next era of AI will not be defined by compute alone. Its growth will be dete...

22/06/2026

NVIDIA Vera CPU Opens the Way for Agentic Scientific AI at Los Alamos National Laboratory

Mission, Vision and Veritas - new Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) supercom...

22/06/2026

From Materials Simulation to Experimental Astronomy, New NVIDIA AI Software Unlocks Scientific Discoveries

At the ISC conference running in Hamburg this week, NVIDIA is introducing new so...

22/06/2026

NAIRR Science Program Reshapes Scientific Research, Powered by NVIDIA AI Infrastructure

For the past two years, the U.S. National Science Foundation's National Arti...

22/06/2026

At ISC, JUPITER Shows What Exascale Science Looks Like

JUPITER, Europe's first exascale supercomputer at Germany's Forschungszentrum J lich, runs on NVIDIA Grace Hopper Superchips and NVIDIA Quantum-X800 Inf...

21/06/2026

FIFAs Oscar Sanchez on World Cup Effort: Were Feeling Good and Where We Want to Be

To call the 2026 FIFA World Cup a big undertaking would be a big understatement....

21/06/2026

John Walden's Cubase Video Tutorials

New series now live on Udemy Regular SOS contributor and Cubase workshop columnist John Walden has just released a new Cubase video course that is now avail...

21/06/2026

Hotter Than a Hot Tub: The 45C Breakthrough to Cool AI's Biggest Machines

Hot tubs sit at about 38 to 40 degrees Celsius, warm enough that most people can only soak for about 15 minutes. NVIDIA's newest AI servers can run their co...

21/06/2026

Sky announces immersive documentary series The Wargame

Sunday 21 June 2026 Sky announces immersive documentary series The Wargame The Wargame first looks ZIP (2MB) Sky today confirms the commission of The Wargam...

20/06/2026

IK Multimedia introduce ReSing Doubling

New add-on creates doubles & vocal stacks IK Multimedia's latest ReSing add-on kits the innovative software out with the ability to automatically genera...

20/06/2026

What's Next for Apogee? Start Here.

What exactly is Apogee Control V3? Control V3 is a new mixer application that controls Apogee interfaces. The new hit feature is that V3 finally allows for...

19/06/2026

NBC Sports U.S. Open Coverage Fires Up 92 Cameras, Bunker cams

Split compound eases operational challenges at Shinnecock Hills Golf Club...

19/06/2026

ESPN's Men's College World Series Production Adds Onsite Studio, POVORA CapCams, Expanded Drone Coverage for Finale in Omaha

North Carolina, Oklahoma meet in the best-of-three Finals as ESPN leans into spe...

19/06/2026

Ninja AB from The Him DSP

Company launch comprehensive mix-comparison tool The Him DSP are a plug-in company founded by The Him, an EDM DJ and producer who has amassed over half a bi...

19/06/2026

Bitwig Studio 6.1 enters beta testing

Major Sampler upgrades introduced The latest version of Bitwig's DAW software has just entered public beta testing, and is available now for all users w...

19/06/2026

Akai Pro's MPC One & MPC Key 37 get G2 upgrade

Four times the power of their predecessors Akai Pro have just introduced upgraded versions of two of their popular standalone MPC systems, kitting them out ...

19/06/2026

Eurovision secures top four position as content distributor rankings hold steady in Poland

Data from May shows seasonal outdoor trends triggers lower viewing Warsaw, Pola...

19/06/2026

Bitfocus Buttons wins another top industry award

Buttons is best control system in the rAVe Best of Infocomm Awards 2026...

19/06/2026

Mavis Studio Makes iPad Production More Powerful

Mavis Studio Makes iPad Production More Powerful Brie Clayton June 19, 2026 0 Comments InfoComm update brings new NDI Preview, PTZ control, USB audio ...

19/06/2026

Immersive Studio Metaverse Stage Tackles Post with Blackmagic Design

Immersive Studio Metaverse Stage Tackles Post with Blackmagic Design Brie Clayton June 19, 2026 0 Comments New narrative projects rely on DaVinci Reso...

19/06/2026

How to Run the Original 1993 After Effects

How to Run the Original 1993 After Effects Graham Quince June 19, 2026 0 Comments How to the original After Effects v1 in an emulator, and you don'...

19/06/2026

IBC Show to Increase Focus on Networking, Startups

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

19/06/2026

Irdeto Taps Axel Gallant as CEO

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

19/06/2026

SMPTE Makes Its Standards Freely Accessible - Opening St...

SMPTE , the home of media professionals, technologists and engineers, has announced that its entire Standards catalog is now freely available to the global medi...