The electric guitar got one really good look in 2016. It came in Rae Sremmurd’s “Black Beatles” video, when brothers Swae Lee and Slim Jxmmi grab a Jaguar bass and upside-down Strat and stage a rooftop concert—an homage to the 1969 farewell performance by the rock legends name-checked in the song’s title. The Mississippi-bred rappers are pretty unconvincing air-strummers, but that’s OK: There’s not a lick of six-string in Mike WiLL Made-It’s glorious psych-trap production.

By making props out of those Fender instruments and branding themselves as the second coming of the Fab Four, Swae and Jxmmi lent serious credence to all those “rock is dead” proclamations that have been popping up in recent years. Even Roger Daltrey, who once sang “Long Live Rock” with his band The Who, is ready for the funeral. Speaking in October 2016 at Desert Trip, where he performed alongside numerous ‘60s legends including “Black Beatles” fan and white Beatles founder Paul McCartney, Daltrey opined:

The sadness for me is that rock has reached a dead end… the only people saying things that matter are the rappers, and most pop is meaningless and forgettable.

Daltrey’s emphasis on “saying things that matter” suggests hip-hop has surpassed rock on account of its subject matter being more culturally relevant. He’s not alone in thinking this. When critics like David Turner assess the decline of indie rock, they often link musical blandness to the notion that straight white dudes with guitars don’t exactly have the most urgent and compelling stories to tell (Turner: “For most of its history, indie rock has been largely driven by the travails of the dejected white bro”).

There’s definitely a connection to be made between rock’s falling popularity and what’s been happening in America over the last decade. The ‘10s have been defined by movements like Black Lives Matter and protests over “bathroom laws,” and over the next four (or lord help us, eight) years, women, people of color, religious minorities, and members of the LGBTQ community will continue to be at the forefront of the major debates in Trump’s America.

Hip-hop will drive this, even when it’s not overtly political. The music’s very place at the top of the totem shapes discourse in this country in really powerful ways.

But that’s not the only reason hip-hop outranks rock ‘n’ roll as pop’s preeminent musical form. After all, there are white male (and female) guitar slingers who sing thoughtfully about less privileged people. Rock music isn’t automatically ill-equipped to talk about what’s going on beyond the bro-rizon. (Downtown Boys, Priests, and Against Me! are a few of the acts that could explain why.) But even when rock says things that matter, it doesn’t command the kind of mainstream attention it once did.

In part, hip-hop has been dominating since the ‘90s because, unlike rock ‘n’ roll, it can sound like absolutely anything. It was born in a culture of repurposing as a matter of necessity, and it’s not tethered to the instruments or traditions of any genre that came before. This was theoretically true in the beginning, when Bronx MCs hyped up crowds over isolated breakbeats, and it’s become more apparent over time. In its first full decade, hip-hop moved rapidly from recycled disco rhythms to krautrock synths, hard rock guitars, and James Brown samples galore. It reached its first creative summit in the late ‘80s, when dizzying sound collages from Public Enemy, De La Soul, and the Beastie Boys gave even steadfast guitar worshippers a reason to pause.

In the ‘90s, as the West Coast discovered high-grade weed and ‘70s funk, the South served up audio codeine in the form of “chopped and screwed.” Puff took hits from the ‘80s and made it sound so crazy. Busta Rhymes and Jay Z proved that even Hitchcock scores and showtunes were in play. And on and on and on.

The last 20 years have been even more of a free-for-all, and in 2016, the best hip-hop records revealed a stunning level of diversity. Last year’s finest projects ranged from the industrial-grade spazziness of Danny Brown’s Atrocity Exhibition to fellow Midwesterner Chance The Rapper’s warm and fuzzy Coloring Book. On the trap tip, 21 Savage and Metro Boomin’s chillingly calm street dispatches counterbalanced Rae Sremmurd and Lil Yachty’s cuddlier pop jams. All this, plus Kanye West high-concept narcissism, YG and A Tribe Called Quest’s tasteful updating of beloved ‘90s tropes, and ScHoolboy Q’s darkly psychedelic Blank Face.

And you can’t forget R&B, a rock ‘n’ roll precursor now inextricably linked to hip-hop. From Frank Ocean’s cryptic pitch-shifted crooning about mermaids and materialism to singer-rapper Tory Lanez doing his part for the dancehall revival to PARTYNEXTDOOR and dvsn offering different takes on the OVO mysterio thing to Jeremih taking a European sex holiday to Chris Brown bringing his trademark arrogance to everything he touched, 2016’s R&B highlights bore the unmistakable stamp of hip-hop. The same was true for pop, as Sia, Fifth Harmony, and Ariana Grande all scored big with rap collabs.

At the center of it all sits the holy trinity of Beyoncé, Rihanna, and of course, Drake. On Views, Drizzy practically becomes a genre unto himself, singing and rapping, sure, but mostly just Draking out about all the duplicitous friends and lovers trying to get a piece of his lifestyle (which isn’t as great as you’d think, even though it’s still pretty great).

In other words, music once lazily dismissed as “talking over a beat” no longer needs talking or even a beat (check out Eminem’s basically a cappella “Campaign Speech”). For years now, artists have been free to rap or sing—Auto-Tuned or au naturel—over samples, original music, interpolations, or whatever else you feel like. Technology has put the power at everyone’s fingertips. Conversely, when fans and critics bemoan the death of rock, they’re talking about something pretty specific: music based around the guitar (or at least traditional instruments you can buy at Guitar Center). There’s really no other meaningful definition if you’re looking for something to mourn. That’s the instrument that’s been missing from the Hot 100 and the upper echelon of most critical recent best-of lists. In 2016, eight rock songs made Billboard’s year-end Hot 100—roughly one-third the number found in 1996’s list, depending on how you count.

Guitar music continues to evolve, but for all its versatility, rock simply isn’t the rule-free zone that hip-hop is. The further you stray from guitar, bass, and drums—holdovers from the blues, R&B, and country that came before—the more likely you’ll do one of two things: create something that’s innovative but not really rock, like the more ambient tracks on Radiohead’s 2000 electronic about-face Kid A, or come up with some electro-rap-pop hybrid that’s arguably too concerned with being everything to really qualify as any one thing (Twenty One Atlas Dragons, or whatever).

In between those extremes is stuff like post-rock, math-rock, and all of the various speciality pre-, post- and -core metal and punk subgenres. These offer more room to stretch out, but none stand much chance of influencing pop culture the way The Beatles, Ramones, Nirvana, or The Strokes did. To varying degrees, all four of those bands showed reverence for sounds that had come before. This is no coincidence. Looking at most major rock movements since the ‘70s—punk, college rock, heartland rock, grunge, garage, dance-punk, stadium folk—it’s impossible to miss the role of nostalgia.

And it continues to this day, even in the absence of a guitar-based “next big thing.” The best rock albums of 2016 weren’t necessarily the most musically innovative. Car Seat Headrest, Angel Olsen, Mitski, and Japanese Breakfast excelled at writing songs and sharing their unique perspectives. In doing so, they all made fantastic records that wouldn’t have sounded alien to indie fans 10 or even 20 years ago. The music is familiar, even when the voices—a promising number of them female and nonwhite—are new and fresh. And there’s comfort in that.

The same can’t be said for hip-hop, where continuity across decades is way less of a thing. Imagine Fetty Wap or Lil Uzi Vert trying to sing-rap their way onto Puff Daddy’s yacht circa 1996. It’s as unthinkable as Puff showing up in 1985 and trying to get Run-D.M.C. to trade their leather jackets for one of his shiny suits. These admittedly ridiculous examples illustrate a larger truth: Hip-hop fans don’t tolerate change—they expect it. Or else they’re too young to know the history that only old-school heads still obsess over. Lil Yachty can’t name five 2Pac or Biggie songs, and wouldn’t you know it, he’s getting along just fine.

Yachty probably doesn’t feel any kind of way about 2Pac’s upcoming induction to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, where he’ll become the first solo hip-hop artist, but plenty of other people do. The news provoked the usual grumbling from rockist luddites who miss the irony of wanting to preserve the integrity and relevance of their genre by putting more guitars behind museum glass. While it’s never been known as a progressive institution, the Rock Hall deserves credit for long ago shifting its definition of “rock” to focus more on what Ice Cube called “a spirit” when N.W.A. was inducted last year. If you’re playing vital music that shapes the culture, you’re making rock ‘n’ roll.

The way things are going, in 10 or 20 years time, that might be the only definition that makes any sense. Rock ‘n’ roll will signify every type of music except the kind made with guitars. Unless Rae Sremmurd actually learn to play.