For the first time, Billboard's Hot 100 Top 40 doesn't feature a single rap song. Is this due to changing listener preferences or recent rule changes?

These are independent reviews of the products mentioned, but TIME receives a commission when purchases are made through affiliate links at no additional cost to the purchaser. Hip-Hop Is History is ...

It may be a reckless exercise to try and list 25 rap albums memorable for the controversy they induced. Since the mid-Eighties, after the genre slowly evolved from a mostly 12-inch medium to one where ...

It’s thanks to the best rappers of all time that hip-hop has continued to grow and become the beloved genre and influence it is today. Born in the Bronx in 1973, hip-hop music has become something ...

If you’re within a certain age bracket, you’ll remember the news being delivered with grave certainty: The iPod is going to end the album as we know it. Yet for as many 99-cent songs as were purchased ...

Yesterday, Billboard deputy editor and Stereogum buddy Andrew Unterberger published a piece with some confusing implications: On last week's Billboard Hot 100, there were no rap songs in the top 40.