How many rappers have had Christmas number one singles?
Hip-hop has been a hugely popular genre of music for a long time now, with plenty of rappers topping the singles charts since it broke into the mainstream. But how many of them have ever managed to secure the fabled Christmas number one spot in the charts?
The answer, sadly, is bleak. Even though hip-hop has become a near-dominant form of popular music, it has never been able to displace the classic Christmas songs that we hear year after year. Hardly anything can.
Every Christmas is guaranteed to be dominated by the likes of Mariah Carey’s ‘All I Want for Christmas Is You,’ Wham’s ‘Last Christmas,’ and the Pogues’ ‘Fairytale of New York,’ as well as older holiday classics like ‘Jingle Bell Rock’ by Bobby Helms, ‘Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree’ by Brenda Lee, and ‘It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year’ by Andy Williams. Hip-hop has, as yet, failed to produce a track that can hold its own against these.
It feels like the situation may even have gotten worse in recent years. Back when the charts were calculated by album sales alone, it may have been easier for newer songs to break into the top spot at Christmas. But since streaming figures came to be included in the way that the charts are calculated, there’s been a skew towards the older Christmas songs. It makes it even harder for a new song to break through.
On the American chart, rappers have failed to ever secure a Christmas number one—although there are those who have come close. Last year, during the first week of December, Kendrick Lamar was at the top of the Billboard Hot 100 with ‘Squabble Up.’ But by the following week he’d been pushed out again, replaced, with grim inevitability, by Mariah’s ‘All I Want for Christmas Is You.’
In terms of the UK, Wham has dominated the last two Christmas charts. Before that, the novelty stylings of a YouTuber called LadBaby, who makes songs about sausage rolls, proved popular, with Ed Sheeran also securing recent Christmas number ones, too, including one that he made with LadBaby.
Generally speaking, rappers have been nowhere to be seen—except in 2016. The electronic group Clean Bandit released a track called ‘Rockabye’ that year, and it ultimately became the Christmas number one. Featured on the song was the pop star Anne-Marie, as well as an icon of the 2000s. Sean Paul featured, too, meaning, really, that he is the first rapper to secure a British number one single at Christmas.
The only other rappers with any claim on that distinction would be Dizzee Rascal and Ms Dynamite, who featured on the third version of the charity single ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas?’ in 2004. Ms Dynamite only sang on the track, but Dizzee rapped a little bit. So maybe he counts as the first rapper with a Christmas number one, rather than Sean Paul? But his place in that song is lost within the sea of other stars who performed on it.
Either way, it’s slim pickings out there for a rap Christmas hit. The classic songs remain dominant, and, if anything, grow ever more so.