Earnings of the world's highest earning rappers and hip-hop artists 2019
Hip-hop and rap music – additional information
Hip-hop and rap as a music genre and culture dates back to 1970s. Hip-hop started as movement in South Bronx in New York City, spreading among wider African American communities in the 1980s and finally gaining mainstream attention in the 2000s, with artists like OutKast and Kanye West.
Since its boom, the music genre maintains strong presence in its home country. It is estimated that almost 6.3 million people in the U.S. visited R&B/rap/hip-hop concerts within a period of six months in 2018, a figure that is expected to grow to 6.93 million by 2020.
Canadian rapper Drake had one of the top-selling digital music albums in the U.S. in 2018 with his fifth studio album 'Scorpion', which was also the top-selling music album based on total streams that year. Despite Drake's popularity in North America, the artist lost out to the likes of Ed Sheeran, Pink and Taylor Swift when it came to a ranking of most profitable music tours in 2018.