Hip Pop
Hip pop is another name for pop rap: hip hop made with pop melodies, sung hooks and radio-friendly production.
Verses are rapped, but the hook is catchy and often sung, and the beat is smoother than in harder rap styles. Lyrics lean toward parties, love and relationships. The crossover began in the late 1980s in the United States and has been a chart staple since the 1990s. The term is sometimes used as a criticism, for rap seen as too commercial.
Artists it is known for: MC Hammer, Will Smith, Flo Rida.
- Family
- Pop
- On Spotify
- No longer returned by Spotify’s API
- What it is
- A genre
- From
- United States, late 1980s
- Also called
- pop rap, pop hip hop
- Trackify listeners who play it
- 7%
About 5,900 of 83,000 Trackify listeners with public profiles have hip pop among their top artists of the last four weeks. Rounded; updated 13 November 2026.
Hip Pop artists
Nicki Minaj
Alicia Keys
Lloyd
Mary J. Blige
Destiny's Child
Trey Songz
Meghan Trainor
Janet Jackson
Solange
Ashanti
The hip pop artists most Trackify listeners have in their top fifty. Each opens on Spotify.
Sources
The definition is written for this site from open sources, and was checked against them on 13 November 2026.