Kendrick Lamar’s Surprise ‘GNX’ Debuts at Number One

Kendrick Lamar’s surprise album GNX debuts at Number One on the Billboard 200 albums chart, the publication reports, earning him his fifth consecutive chart-topper. The album debuts with 319,000 units in the U.S., according to Luminate. It was boosted by streaming, with more than 379 million on-demand streams of the album’s 12 songs comprising 285,000 of those units.

GNX earned the third-biggest streaming week of any R&B/hip-hop album in 2024 and the second-biggest debut streaming week of the year, bested by the first and second weeks of Taylor Swift’s The Tortured Poets Department, which garnered 891.37 and 428.54 million streams, respectively. Lamar’s album is also the year’s sixth largest debut per equivalent album units on the charts. Lamar dropped the album around noon on Nov. 22 without any warning.

Elsewhere on the Billboard 200, the Wicked soundtrack bows at Number Two with 139,000 units earned, making it the highest debut for a big-screen adaptation of a stage musical in the chart’s history (the film starring Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo also broke records this weekend, becoming the highest grossing movie based on a Broadway musical ever at the domestic box office). Meanwhile, Sabrina Carpenter’s previously chart-topping Short n’ Sweet rises from the fifth to the third spot with 69,000 units.

Lamar previously nabbed top spots on the albums chart with 2022’s Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers, 2017’s DAMN., 2016’s Untitled Unmastered, and 2015’s To Pimp a Butterfly. He also earned Number Ones this year on the Billboard Hot 100 songs chart with his solo single “Not Like Us” and “Like That,” his Future and Metro Boomin collaboration.

On  Feb. 9, Lamar will headline the Super Bowl halftime show in New Orleans. It’s his second performance at the Big Game, following his appearance during Dr. Dre’s all-star hip-hop extravaganza in 2022.

From Rolling Stone US.