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At one point in time, hip-hop and its rich culture was a suppressed underground art form that was not present in the mainstream. As a scene created by the youth, it had no respect.

Unlike disco, funk or pop-rock, the establishment didn’t broadcast rap music to the masses on a wide scale and most definitely didn’t consider it a threat.

However, the genre’s growing popularity nationwide and internationally over the years has made it impossible for the mainstream media to suppress what was an innovative phenomenon.

However, with each generation, new technologies have meant a change in the means of consumption. When hip-hop emerged, sales were calculated based on the number of physical 12″ vinyls sold. This method then began to take into account the number of cassette tapes sold, and this was how rap was consumed well into the mid-1980s.

However, the 1990s saw a shift to CDs, and the sale of vinyl began to decline slowly. Fortunately, this smaller, shinier disc was still physical. But in 2003, when the iTunes Store released a feature for purchasing and downloading digital music, sales entered a non-physical era.

Streaming has been a gift and curse to artists worldwide, including rappers. At first, this was fine as people were still purchasing and downloading music, which was easily quantifiable. However, in the late 2000s, platforms such as MySpace and Spotify began to appear, where the public could access popular music for free.

The consumption of music for free on platforms such as Spotify has shown hip-hop to be one of the world’s most popular genres. However, since the public rollout of Spotify, artists and institutions alike have been concerned about the way streaming has skewed and distorted album sales.

Although it has hindered the calculation of album sales, it has set more visible and apparent milestones of success in the music industry, and some artists have seen unbelievable amounts of evidential success concerning the numbers of their songs.

There are a slew of well-performing hip-hop singles. However, many of the highest-selling rap tracks border on pop. The line between commercial and rap music can sometimes get blurred, and with songs like Macklemore’s ‘Thrift Shop’ and ‘Can’t Hold Us’, some of hip-hop’s best-selling singles are dubious.

Since the 2000s and the rapid rise of the internet, hip-hop artists have been able to sell more and more. However, one song currently ranks way above the rest concerning sales.

According to all chart data and when compared to other singles released in 2015, the best-selling rap song of ever is Wiz Khalifa’s ‘See You Again’. The track was the lead single of the Fast & Furious soundtrack. The song, which appeared on Furious 7: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack, was a tribute to the late actor Paul Walker.

The song featured the singer-songwriter Charlie Puth. It stayed atop the Billboard Hot 100 for 12 weeks, tying with Eminem’s 2002 8 Mile single ‘Lose Yourself’. ‘See You Again’ reached number one on the charts across Europe, from Portugal to Slovakia and was number one in countries Canada, Mexico, and Colombia, to name a few.

Khalifa and Puth performed the track on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon and on an episode of Saturday Night Live (SNL). You can listen to the song in the video below.