Kendrick Lamar might have Drake beat in their rap war as far as streaming numbers go.
Despite being known for his less frequent releases, Kendrick, 36, has "more than doubled his 2023 output with 2024 diss tracks alone," Billboard’s Jason Lipshutz notes. The magazine reports that these songs have not only performed well on their own, they've also lifted K.Dot’s entire back catalog, which includes hit albums like Damn and Good Kid, M.A.A.D. City.
Over the weekend, streams for Kendrick's discography—not counting his Drake disses—lifted 49 percent, to 50.62 million, from the previous weekend's 33.98 million.
Drake’s catalog, which was bolstered last year by For All the Dogs, hasn’t seen a bump. While his overall streaming numbers are about twice as many as Kendrick's, his discography—also excluding his Lamar disses—took a 4.9 percent weekend-to-weekend dip from 105.86 million to 100.69 million.
As far as the diss tracks go, Lamar’s “Euphoria” debuted at No. 11 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart for the week of May 11 with 27.6 million domestic streams in its first three days of release. His latest, “Not Like Us,” may debut higher thanks to the 21.1 million streams it opened with. “Meet the Grahams,” which arrived in the middle, fared more modestly with 8.8 million. Figures for “6:16 in LA” weren’t provided by Billboard because the song remains exclusive to Instagram.
Drake's "Push Ups" debuted at No. 19 on the Hot 100 in its first week and climbed to No. 17 this week.
