If you think that you only need to study contemporary academic music, this is certainly not the case. Ideally, it would be good to understand a little bit in each genre, and then preferences will develop, and style connections will become clear and your neurons will tickle pleasantly.
Therefore, let us also remember about contemporary non-academic genres.
Post-punk that emerged from rock music with its electric guitars and drums, but simplified it. He gave her more modern meanings, sometimes even postironic ones.
Contemporary jazz. In 2020, he became relaxed, soft, warm and quiet (not all, of course, but still). Taste free jazz, a more atonal and less rhythmically organized version of its ancestor.
Electonic music. The genre, paradoxically most associated with the academic: here it is, working with timbre, complex processes, multilayer! ..
Pop music. Pop – especially does not change in meaning for several decades. Instruments and methods of sound processing are changing, but the forms of the songs (they are still in the verse-chorus) and their meanings (they are still about love) remain.
Hip-hop culture. Hip-hop and rap now exist in the form of very different directions, such as abstract hip-hop and jazz rap, which need to be discussed separately, otherwise it will be too general and blurry. In short, in 2020 some hip-hop is clearly going to become related to jazz, which heralds a global synthesis and total musical euphoria.