Kendrick Lamar is set to become the first rapper ever to earn four #1 hits within a 12-month span.

Revolutionary

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HDD crediting Kendrick for hip hop renaissance

Thanks in large part to Kendrick Lamar, hip-hop is enjoying an undeniable surge in the marketplace. Could this substantial uptick mean that the genre, which has largely been eclipsed at the top of the charts by pop, country and Latin recently, is in the midst of a real renaissance?

Not that we haven’t had hard-charging, top-charting rap records in the last couple of years. Travis Scott had a giant with 2023’s UTOPIA (Cactus Jack/Epic)—now at 3.2m in U.S. ATD—which he followed with a positively enormous world tour. His labelmate Future and Republic’s Metro Boomin teamed up for two vital 2024 albums that played a role in the present cycle, We Don’t Trust You and We Still Don’t Trust You (1.7m and 647k ATD, respectively); the former boasted the smash “Like That” f/Kendrick. And Columbia’s Tyler, the Creator dropped a biggie in October with his CHROMAKOPIA, which has done 1.1m and was clearly a significant creative and commercial leap for the inventive artist.

Yet as successful as all these recordings were, they didn’t affect the cultural conversation the way Kendrick has.

The era’s big rap kahuna is single “Not Like Us,” Kendrick’s spicy beef special, which became a roaring success on the DSPs (it’s enjoyed more than 1.1 billion global streams on Spotify alone) and ultimately won both Record and Song of the Year at the Grammys. It was followed by his smash pgLang/Interscope album GNX, which bowed with 353k last fall and, following the rapper’s triumphant Grammy and Super Bowl sundays, returned to #1 with a vigorous 247k. It’s racked up 1.4m in ATD.

Mr. Lamar has the top four songs at Spotify U.S. as of this writing, with the SZA duet “luther” and “Not Like Us” leading (they're also Top 5 on the global chart) and two of the Top 5 at Apple Music.

All this top-of-the-culture visibility also supercharged K-Dot’s catalog, particularly albums DAMN. (9m ATD) and good kid, m.A.A.d city (9.4m).

Rest of the article (talking about artists) here:

 
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Quite stunning that this nikka only dropped 15 songs and was featured on 2 other tracks (excluding the free instagram song), and almost all of them became hits. This is unprecedented shyt.

Even gave Mustard and Metro their first #1

Gave SZA another #1, went on to appear on her album and gave her another top 10 hit...
 

Kooze4524

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The biggest year in hip-hop? The GOAT years: '24 Kendrick, '02 Eminem, '03 50 Cent, and '99 DMX. It's a tight race between '02 Eminem and '24 Kendrick, in my opinion
 
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