Post-pandemic slow down in rap

These are very exciting times for hip-hop in general, and the recent high-profile beefs between Kendrick Lamar and Drake have put it back in the spotlight in a big way. I’ll get back to the latest on all that drama shortly but, closer to home, things don’t seem to be accelerating at the promising rate they were a few years ago. In Ireland, there’s been amazing success stories in recent years. Hip-hop and related genres have progressed greatly, but there’s been a bit of slow-down in the last couple of years. The pandemic/lockdown era marked a culmination of a good few years of progress for rap in this country. Hip-hop had always been popular here, but it’s fair to say it was far more underground in the 90s and 2000s. I’ve written extensively on the pioneers of this era before, but it wasn’t until the mid 2010s that the mainstream media really started taking hip-hop culture seriously. The Rusangano family won best album at the high-profile Choice Music awards in 2017 for Let the Dead Bury the Dead, and this marks a point for me when the national media woke up to the underground. The following years were relatively fruitful...