--- title: 402 and zero: rap set its chart record the year it vanished from the top 40 publisher: RapCanon canonical: https://rapcanon.com/research/hot-100-entries-2026/ license: CC-BY-4.0 retrieved: 2026-08-16 --- > Drake has 402 career Hot 100 entries. In October 2025 the Hot 100 top 40 contained no rap songs at all for the first time since 1990. Hip-hop's top 25 by chart entries, read from Billboard's own pages, with every disagreement shown. Home / Research / Hot 100 Entries 2026 Data study # 402 and zero: rap set its chart record the year it vanished from the top 40 402 career Hot 100 entries for Drake, more than any act in the chart's 68 years. Nobody else has reached 300. 0 rap songs in the Hot 100 top 40 on the chart dated 25 October 2025, the first shutout since February 1990. Those two numbers describe the same chart, roughly a year apart. That is the finding, and it is the opposite of the story the record books tell. Rap owns the all-time accumulation record more completely than it has ever owned anything on the Hot 100, and it owns it at the precise moment its actual chart presence is contracting hard. The resolution is unglamorous and it is the reason this piece exists: the entry count is not a popularity measure. It is a measure of how many times a name appeared in a chart billing, under eligibility rules that have changed twice in ways that make the eras non-comparable. Read it as a record of the machinery and it is fascinating. Read it as a ranking of who mattered and it is nonsense, and the nonsense is what circulates. So here is the top 25, taken from Billboard's own per-artist pages rather than from anybody's summary of them, with the disagreements printed rather than smoothed away. The ranking ## Hip-hop's top 25 by career Hot 100 entries Figures current through the Billboard Hot 100 dated August 15, 2026. Entries include featured and credited appearances, which is Billboard's own definition of the statistic. 27 names appear because of a three-way tie at 56. - 1 Drake 402 Hot 100 entries, 14 number ones, 17 years between first and most recent entry. ### Drake First entry 23 May 2009, Best I Ever Had 402entries 14No. 1s 90top 10s 17yr span 23.6per yr Note. Billboard returns 14. Sources that count "Sicko Mode" report 15; Billboard bills that record to Travis Scott alone. Photo The Come Up Show, CC BY 2.0 - 2 Future 245 Hot 100 entries, 3 number ones, 15 years between first and most recent entry. ### Future First entry 16 Apr 2011, Racks as a guest 245entries 3No. 1s 16top 10s 15yr span 16.3per yr Photo thecomeupshow, CC BY 2.0 - 3 Lil Wayne 195 Hot 100 entries, 3 number ones, 27 years between first and most recent entry. ### Lil Wayne First entry 10 Jul 1999, Back That Thang Up as a guest 195entries 3No. 1s 26top 10s 27yr span 7.2per yr Note. Billboard renders the title "Back That Thang Up" where Wikipedia uses "Back That Azz Up". "Bling Bling" was his second entry, not his first. Photo Ryan Dombal from New York, United States, CC BY-SA 2.0 - 4 Kanye West 177 Hot 100 entries, 5 number ones, 23 years between first and most recent entry. ### Kanye West First entry 29 Nov 2003, Through The Wire 177entries 5No. 1s 21top 10s 23yr span 7.7per yr Note. Billboard's editorial list credits him as "Ye", but /artist/ye/ returns a page with no chart rows. "Slow Jamz" entered one week later and is not his first. Photo Shahril Affandi Radzali, CC BY 2.0 - 5 Lil Baby 160 Hot 100 entries, 0 number ones, 9 years between first and most recent entry. ### Lil Baby First entry 30 Dec 2017, My Dawg 160entries 0No. 1s 13top 10s 9yr span 17.8per yr Photo ALL URBAN CENTRAL, CC BY 3.0 - 6 Nicki Minaj 149 Hot 100 entries, 3 number ones, 16 years between first and most recent entry. ### Nicki Minaj First entry 20 Feb 2010, Knockout as a guest 149entries 3No. 1s 23top 10s 16yr span 9.3per yr Note. Commonly credited to "BedRock" (2009). Billboard bills that record "Young Money Featuring Lloyd" and it appears nowhere in her chart history. Photo steven.i from Toronto, Canada, CC BY 2.0 - 7 Travis Scott 133 Hot 100 entries, 5 number ones, 11 years between first and most recent entry. ### Travis Scott First entry 27 Jun 2015, 3500 133entries 5No. 1s 18top 10s 11yr span 12.1per yr Note. "Upper Echelon" (2013) is widely claimed as his first entry. It appears nowhere in Billboard's chart history for him. Photo Brandon Dull, CC BY 2.0 - 8 Lil Uzi Vert 115 Hot 100 entries, 1 number ones, 10 years between first and most recent entry. ### Lil Uzi Vert First entry 2016, Money Longer 115entries 1No. 1 7top 10s 10yr span 11.5per yr Photo glenjamn3, CC BY 3.0 - 9 21 Savage 113 Hot 100 entries, 2 number ones, 10 years between first and most recent entry. ### 21 Savage First entry 1 Oct 2016, X billed co-lead 113entries 2No. 1s 17top 10s 10yr span 11.3per yr Photo Ralph Arvesen from Round Mountain, Texas, CC BY 2.0 - 10 Eminem 112 Hot 100 entries, 5 number ones, 27 years between first and most recent entry. ### Eminem First entry 1999, My Name Is 112entries 5No. 1s 23top 10s 27yr span 4.1per yr Photo DOD News Features, CC BY 2.0 - 11 J. Cole 111 Hot 100 entries, 1 number ones, 16 years between first and most recent entry. ### J. Cole First entry 2010, Who Dat 111entries 1No. 1 13top 10s 16yr span 6.9per yr Note. A Wikipedia-derived reading gives "All I Want Is You" (Miguel Featuring J. Cole). Billboard's own earliest row is "Who Dat". Both are 2010; the title is contested. Photo COLE_ZEKE_WIKI.jpg: Candice Rose, LBF! derivative work: C.Fred (talk), CC BY-SA 3.0 - 12 YoungBoy Never Broke Again 110 Hot 100 entries, 0 number ones, 9 years between first and most recent entry. ### YoungBoy Never Broke Again First entry 2 Sept 2017, Untouchable 110entries 0No. 1s 1top 10 9yr span 12.2per yr Photo MILLION DOLLAZ WORTH OF GAME, CC BY 3.0 - 13 Jay-Z 105 Hot 100 entries, 4 number ones, 30 years between first and most recent entry. ### Jay-Z First entry 6 Apr 1996, Ain't No Nigga 105entries 4No. 1s 22top 10s 30yr span 3.5per yr Note. Hot 100 peak No. 50. The No. 17 figure that circulates is the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs peak, a different chart. Photo Mike Barry from Wirral, England, CC BY 2.0 - 14 Gunna 99 Hot 100 entries, 0 number ones, 8 years between first and most recent entry. ### Gunna First entry 2 Jun 2018, Life Goes On as a guest 99entries 0No. 1s 4top 10s 8yr span 12.4per yr Note. Often given as "Drip Too Hard". That was his first top 10, not his first entry. Photo Young Thug, CC BY 3.0 - 15 Lil Durk 98 Hot 100 entries, 0 number ones, 8 years between first and most recent entry. ### Lil Durk First entry 20 Oct 2018, Off White VLONE as a guest 98entries 0No. 1s 3top 10s 8yr span 12.3per yr Note. Commonly reported as 2020's "Viral Moment". That was his first entry as a lead artist. Counting features, it is 2018. Photo JD Sports, CC BY 3.0 - 16 Young Thug 98 Hot 100 entries, 3 number ones, 12 years between first and most recent entry. ### Young Thug First entry 1 Mar 2014, Stoner 98entries 3No. 1s 6top 10s 12yr span 8.2per yr Photo Young Thug, CC BY 3.0 - 17 Rod Wave, drawn from their own chart record 93 Hot 100 entries, 0 number ones, 7 years between first and most recent entry. RW ### Rod Wave First entry 23 Nov 2019, Heart On Ice 93entries 0No. 1s 0top 10s 7yr span 13.3per yr Note. 93 entries, zero top 10s, zero No. 1s. The only artist in this top 20 with zero of both. - 18 Kendrick Lamar 92 Hot 100 entries, 6 number ones, 14 years between first and most recent entry. ### Kendrick Lamar First entry 18 Aug 2012, Swimming Pools (Drank) 92entries 6No. 1s 23top 10s 14yr span 6.6per yr Photo Fuzheado, CC BY-SA 4.0 - 19 Metro Boomin, drawn from their own chart record 88 Hot 100 entries, 1 number ones, 10 years between first and most recent entry. MB ### Metro Boomin First entry 1 Oct 2016, X billed co-lead 88entries 1No. 1 10top 10s 10yr span 8.8per yr Note. A producer, billed on the artist line for all 88. A severe undercount of his real footprint: the records he produced without a billing credit do not appear at all. - 20 Juice WRLD 86 Hot 100 entries, 0 number ones, 8 years between first and most recent entry. ### Juice WRLD First entry 26 May 2018, Lucid Dreams 86entries 0No. 1s 9top 10s 8yr span 10.8per yr Note. May be a tie. Wikipedia states "All Girls Are the Same" and "Lucid Dreams" debuted simultaneously. Photo Lexiou WesCudi, CC BY-SA 2.0 - 21 Meek Mill 67 Hot 100 entries, 0 number ones, 15 years between first and most recent entry. ### Meek Mill First entry 19 Nov 2011, Ambition as a guest 67entries 0No. 1s 1top 10 15yr span 4.5per yr Photo Chris Sikich from Philadelphia, USA, CC BY-SA 2.0 - 22 Cardi B 66 Hot 100 entries, 5 number ones, 9 years between first and most recent entry. ### Cardi B First entry 22 Jul 2017, Bodak Yellow (Money Moves) 66entries 5No. 1s 13top 10s 9yr span 7.3per yr Photo Chrisallmeid, CC BY-SA 4.0 - 23= T.I. 58 Hot 100 entries, 4 number ones, 23 years between first and most recent entry. ### T.I. First entry 5 Apr 2003, Never Scared as a guest 58entries 4No. 1s 11top 10s 23yr span 2.5per yr Photo Eddy James Rissling, CC BY 2.0 - 23= DJ Khaled 58 Hot 100 entries, 1 number ones, 20 years between first and most recent entry. ### DJ Khaled First entry 24 Jun 2006, Holla At Me 58entries 1No. 1 7top 10s 20yr span 2.9per yr Photo Meghan Roberts, CC BY 2.0 - 25= Ludacris 56 Hot 100 entries, 5 number ones, 26 years between first and most recent entry. ### Ludacris First entry 30 Sept 2000, What's Your Fantasy 56entries 5No. 1s 18top 10s 26yr span 2.2per yr Photo Toglenn, CC BY-SA 3.0 - 25= Rick Ross 56 Hot 100 entries, 0 number ones, 20 years between first and most recent entry. ### Rick Ross First entry 20 May 2006, Hustlin' 56entries 0No. 1s 3top 10s 20yr span 2.8per yr Photo Michael Williams from New York City, United States, CC BY 2.0 - 25= Big Sean 56 Hot 100 entries, 0 number ones, 15 years between first and most recent entry. ### Big Sean First entry 19 Mar 2011, My Last 56entries 0No. 1s 3top 10s 15yr span 3.7per yr Photo The Come Up Show, CC BY 2.0 The shape of it ## There is a 19-entry hole below the top 20 Between Juice WRLD at 86 and Meek Mill at 67, nobody exists. Roughly 140 additional rap artists were swept the same way to be sure the band was genuinely empty rather than merely unchecked, and it is empty. Data Drake: 402 Future: 245 Lil Wayne: 195 Kanye West: 177 Lil Baby: 160 Nicki Minaj: 149 Travis Scott: 133 Lil Uzi Vert: 115 21 Savage: 113 Eminem: 112 J. Cole: 111 YoungBoy Never Broke Again: 110 Jay-Z: 105 Gunna: 99 Lil Durk: 98 Young Thug: 98 Rod Wave: 93 Kendrick Lamar: 92 Metro Boomin: 88 Juice WRLD: 86 Meek Mill: 67 Cardi B: 66 T.I.: 58 DJ Khaled: 58 Ludacris: 56 Rick Ross: 56 Big Sean: 56 - 19 entries of empty space Career Hot 100 entries by rank. n = 27 artists. As of the Billboard Hot 100 dated August 15, 2026. Source: Billboard per-artist chart-history pages. Crimson is the top 20, teal is the tail below the gap. A gap that clean is usually a boundary rather than a coincidence, and here it is a generational one. Every artist above it has been charting through the streaming era, where an album release can enter its entire tracklist at once. The cliff is roughly where that mechanic stops being available to a career. The decoupling ## The record and the reality moved in opposite directions Data 0 4 8 12 16 16 Oct 2020 8 Oct 2023 0 Oct 2025 Rap songs in the Billboard Hot 100 top 40. n = 3 observations. Sources: Billboard, "No Rap Songs in Hot 100's Top 40 for First Time Since 1990"; Complex, which dates the previous occurrence to 2 February 1990. Hip-hop's overall market share over the same span: about 30% in 2020, just over 25% in 2023, 24% in 2025. Stereogum's Tom Breihan, quoted in Billboard's own write-up of the shutout, gave the sharpest reading of it: Rap music is still all over the top 40; it's just not being made by rappers. That is the mechanism. The sound won and the billing did not, and the entry count only ever measured the billing. What the statistic actually counts ## Billing, not participation Four things fall straight out of the data once you accept that sentence, and each one is checkable. 1. Drake has 14 No. 1s or 15, depending on one record. Billboard returns 14. Sicko Mode hit No. 1 in 2018 and Billboard bills it to Travis Scott alone, so it is not a Drake No. 1 by Billboard's count, whatever your ears say. Every source reporting 15 is counting participation. 2. Metro Boomin is the most undercounted person in this dataset. He has 88 entries because he is billed on the artist line 88 times. The far larger body of records he produced without a billing credit contributes exactly nothing to his number. 3. 7 of these 27 artists entered the Hot 100 for the first time as a guest on somebody else's record, with 2 more arriving billed as co-leads. The feature is not a footnote in rap's chart history. For a large share of its biggest accumulators it is the front door, and it is only visible because this statistic counts guests. 4. Rod Wave has 93 entries, zero top 10s and zero No. 1s. He is the only artist in the top 20 with none of either. An enormous, devoted audience that never once produced a chart peak is a genuinely modern career shape, and the entry count is the only common statistic that can see it at all. The boundary ## Who counts as hip-hop, and who we left out The statistic is genre-agnostic. The ranking is not, so the boundary has to be stated rather than assumed. Ours: An artist qualifies if rapping is the primary mode of their charting work and Billboard routes the bulk of their catalogue through its R&B/Hip-Hop and Rap charts. Producers count only where Billboard bills them on the artist line, because that is the only thing the Hot 100 counts. That rule admits two producers, Metro Boomin and DJ Khaled, neither of whom raps. We think that is correct rather than embarrassing: the statistic measures billed credits, they are billed, and a rule tight enough to exclude them also breaks on half the feature-first entries above. Here is everyone the boundary excludes who would otherwise have placed, because a silent omission at these numbers reads as an error. ArtistEntriesWould have rankedWhy not Chris Brown1254R&B singer. Enormous rap-chart presence and a huge volume of rap features, but his first entry, "Run It!" (2005), is R&B and rapping is not the primary mode of his charting work.Justin Bieber1235Pop singer. Extensive rap collaboration does not make a rap catalogue.The Weeknd1176His first Hot 100 entry was a Drake feature and he came up inside the OVO orbit, but he is an alt-R&B and synth-pop singer who does not rap.Bad Bunny1138The hardest call on the board. Latin trap is a rap subgenre and he raps, but the bulk of the catalogue is reggaeton and Billboard routes him through its Latin charts. Under a "does he rap" boundary he is in at No. 8.Ariana Grande1109Pop.Beyonce10711R&B. Her first Hot 100 entry was a Jay-Z feature, which is a good detail and not a genre argument.Post Malone9717The most contested name here. He broke through on a rap record and charted on Hot Rap Songs for years, but he has publicly rejected the label and Billboard now routes his work through country. Excluded, and stated rather than silently dropped. The two we are least sure about are Bad Bunny and Post Malone, and we would rather say that than pretend the rule resolved them cleanly. Under a "does he rap" boundary Bad Bunny is in at No. 8 and the list is wrong as published. Method ## How this was read, and what would change it Figures come from Billboard's own per-artist chart-history pages, which are the source the aggregators are quoting when they quote each other. Ranks 1 to 7 were extracted twice, in two separate passes using two different access methods, and every entry count, No. 1 count and first-entry title matched. That rules out transcription error. It cannot rule out Billboard being wrong about itself, and by construction nothing can, because this is a Billboard statistic and Billboard is the only authority on it. ### Why the number you saw somewhere else is different Because it is older. This statistic changes every week, and Billboard's own evergreen chart-beat pages go stale without visible dating: one still live at the time of writing reports Drake at 338, which is 64 entries behind. Any figure published without an as-of date is worthless. Ours is the Billboard Hot 100 dated August 15, 2026, and it will be wrong soon too. ### Wikipedia's numbers are right and its citations do not support them Wikipedia's entry-count table cites Billboard artist pages. The access dates on those citations are wildly out of step with the figures they are attached to: Future's 245 is cited to a page accessed in April 2021, Lil Wayne's 195 likewise. Future did not have 245 entries in 2021. The numbers have been updated in place while the citations stayed behind, so they happen to be correct and are not actually sourced. Anyone claiming to have cross-checked this against Wikipedia is claiming a corroboration that does not exist. ### The caveat that matters more than the ranking Before 5 December 1998 only commercially released singles were eligible for the Hot 100. On that date it became a songs chart, and streaming later made it possible for an album to enter its whole tracklist in one week. That is why Drake has 402 and The Notorious B.I.G. has 16, and it is not a statement about their relative significance. The statistic measures chart-eligibility regime at least as much as it measures popularity. Any use of this list to argue about greatness is using the wrong instrument. ### What we could not establish Ranks 21 and below are single-sourced: Billboard's editorial list stops at 86 and Wikipedia stops at 100, so those figures rest on the per-artist pages alone. The three-way tie at 56 has no published tiebreak, so we show it as a tie rather than inventing an order. Three first-entry dates remain at year granularity. And the total number of distinct songs ever to chart on the Hot 100 is not published anywhere we could find, so we have not estimated it; what Billboard does state is that more than 8,000 artists have earned at least one entry since 1958. There is also a live methodology change inside the window this piece covers. Effective the chart dated 25 October 2025, Billboard tightened the recurrent rules that remove songs from the Hot 100. That affects how long a song stays rather than whether it entered, so it does not move the counts above, but a chart that changed its own rules during the period is worth saying out loud. We could not verify the precise thresholds from any page we could fetch. ### What would prove this wrong A Billboard per-artist page returning a different count than the one printed above, on the chart dated 2026-08-15. That is the whole falsifier, it is a single click per row, and the URLs are below so you can run it. ### Three things everyone repeats that are not true Each was checked against Billboard's own row data. Nicki Minaj's first entry is not BedRock: Billboard bills that record "Young Money Featuring Lloyd" and it appears nowhere in her chart history. Travis Scott's is not Upper Echelon, which never charted on the Hot 100 at all. Kanye West's is not Slow Jamz, which entered one week after Through The Wire. A related trap: Wikipedia discography year columns are release years, not chart years, which is how songs get dated to a year they did not chart in. The data is open. Everything above is published as CC-BY 4.0 JSON with the method attached. Take it, check it, publish something better with it. Sources ## Read the primaries Billboard, the Hot 100, and the per-artist chart histories at billboard.com/artist//chart-history/hsi/ - Billboard, no rap songs in the Hot 100's top 40 for the first time since 1990 - Complex, dating the previous shutout to 2 February 1990 - Wikipedia, Billboard Hot 100, for the 5 December 1998 eligibility change - Wikipedia, Hot 100 achievements and milestones, discussed above rather than relied on - Forbes, on Gunna's 2018 chart entries - Billboard's list of every artist with 100 or more Hot 100 hits, read via licensed syndication because billboard.com returns 402 to fetchers --- ## How to cite this page **APA** RapCanon. (2026). 402 and zero: rap set its chart record the year it vanished from the top 40. Retrieved from https://rapcanon.com/research/hot-100-entries-2026/ **BibTeX** ```bibtex @misc{rapcanon-402-and-zero-rap-set-its-chart-record-th, title = {402 and zero: rap set its chart record the year it vanished from the top 40}, author = {{RapCanon}}, year = {2026}, url = {https://rapcanon.com/research/hot-100-entries-2026/}, note = {Accessed: 2026-08-16} } ``` **Wikipedia** ``` {{cite web |title=402 and zero: rap set its chart record the year it vanished from the top 40 |url=https://rapcanon.com/research/hot-100-entries-2026/ |publisher=RapCanon |access-date=2026-08-16}} ``` Licensed CC-BY 4.0. Reuse it, including commercially, with attribution and a link back. Canonical HTML: https://rapcanon.com/research/hot-100-entries-2026/