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:
Is rap's present chart dominance the beginning of a new era, or a bubble caused by the drama of Kendrick's giant smash?
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