I think the conflation of genres, the blurring of genre lines, complicates the conversation, and for a person with a certain perspective, it makes this stuff meaningless. Agree with above poster that hip-hop is more of a cultural movement than merely a musical genre; while this can be said of virtually any musical genre, it's especially true in this case. So I think a lot of the time when we look at music and ask, "Is this hip-hop?," a "Yes" answer is riding on whether or not the musicians making it are part of that cultural movement. "We don't wanna hear you say nigga no more," etc. But if you strip that away and just look at the music, it becomes a lot harder. Hyperpop deliberately borrows from basically every millennial cultural movement. Is food house rap? Is Charli XCX a rapper? She sure raps a lot, for someone who isn't one. Is Ren a rapper, or some sort of Welsh bard? I've heard musicians as poles apart as Nellie McKay and The Punch Brothers "rapping" on record. Music considered hip-hop by the mainstream might decline in popularity but the sounds of the genre have been cut up for use as ingredients elsewhere. Which is very hip-hop, really, that's how the genre came into its own, cutting up other music and repurposing it to make something new.
