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Twitter Is Confused Over 'Pop Rap' Category On Spotify's ‘Unwrapped’ Year-End Tally

Some subscribers even got the term “genre-fluid.”

With the year drawing to a close, Spotify has been rolling out its annual end-of-year lists for the latest insights into the platform’s most-streamed artists.

  • The lists all include which songs we were bopping to the hardest for all of 2019 as well the emerging genres that have been taking the music industry by storm. It’s also become a much-anticipated yearly moment for subscribers to share their listening habits with the rest of the world as we all fondly reflect on the music scene at large. But some listeners were left bewildered Thursday morning (December 5) after discovering a category called “Pop Rap” listed on their personal year-end tally.  

     

  • “Yo, my [“Spotify Wrapped”] gotta be wrong. WTF is “Pop Rap?” I think they [meant] New Jack Swing,” one person commented. 

    “[I] didn’t even know pop rap was a genre lool,” another tweeted. 

     

  • As more people shared their “Spotify Unwrapped” reviews on Twitter, they were even more confused as to what exactly constitutes for “Pop Rap.” To their confusion, it seems Spotify had no rhyme or reason as to how they differentiated between hip-hop, rap, and pop genres given the eclectic mix of artists that received a shoutout on the steaming service’s curated “Sound of Pop Rap” playlist. It also included everyone from Soulja Boy, the Ying Yang Twins and the Migos to Trey Songz, The Weeknd and Sean Kingston

     

  • For users who had music tastes that dabbled into a bit of everything, Spotify determined that they “were genre-fluid.” 

  • For now, folks have chalked the term up to to popular hip-hop songs that have flipped the mainstream switch. However, the distinction does put Drake’s recent recognition as Spotify’s most-streamed artist of the decade into more perspective as an artist who has transcended genres. 

    Who’s on your “Sound of Pop Rap” playlist? 

     

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