Kendrick Lamar’s Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers album has collected yet another accolade, becoming the first rap album from 2022 to cross one billion streams on Spotify.
Chart Data announced the achievement on Tuesday (August 30). The only project to match Kendrick’s streaming output in the R&B realm is The Weeknd’s Dawn FM, which hit a billion streams in March and then surpassed two billion streams earlier this month.
Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers has been powered on Spotify by top tracks like “N95” (128,570,543 global streams), “Die Hard” (99,497,158 global streams) and “Rich Spirit” (47,780,629 global streams).
Chart Data also noted that K. Dot’s fifth studio album has sold over 500,000 units, but it has yet to be certified gold by the RIAA. The project could surpass one million sales by the end of 2022.
Released on May 13, Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 with 295,000 total album-equivalent units in its first week — the biggest debut for a rap album this year.
Kendrick Lamar is continuing his trek across North America for The Big Steppers Tour with his cousin Baby Keem and pgLang signee Tanna Leone. The tour is set to invade the West Coast with a pair of shows in Oakland this week.
LeBron James even pulled up to the Vancouver tour date over the weekend, with footage of the four-time NBA champion turning up in the crowd going viral.
“Vancouver!! Thank you for the hospitality over the weekend,” LeBron tweeted after the show. “1st time in your beautiful, wonderful city! @kendricklamar you’re 1 of a kind my brother! SPECIAL show by a SPECIAL person! Appreciate the love!”
Kendrick Lamar Pens Love Letter To 'Mr. Morale' Album & Tour: 'I'm Forever Underground'
In other K. Dot news, the former TDE rapper is already working on his sixth studio album, according to one of his go-to producers.
Sounwave — who has production on 13 out of the 16 songs on Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers — recently told Complex work has already started on the rapper’s next LP, which is par for the course for their creative process.
“Oh, we always start, immediately after,” he revealed. “Like, we’re starting on the next one now. That’s never going to change, all the way from the Kendrick Lamar EP. The next day, we started on Section.80. It’s just the ideas never stopped. That’s one of the main reasons I go on tour with him, is to create the next album.
“We can’t skip a beat. We have to just keep it going. There’s no breaks. There’s no such thing as a vacation when you’re doing what you love. Everything you do is what you love to do, so you’re excited.”
But hey, he flopped and is on his way to irrelevance cause sells weren’t an extra 50k more, right? We are always claiming that the younger dudes use streaming over everything, and this should be a good enough bit of proof that he has a message which is getting across well to them. So what’s the next excuse just to say his time is up?
He sold less than half of his last album. That’s a flop. And so is weeknd too who couldn’t even go no.1 with dawn fm
Yeah right. They flopped yet they’re currently on sold out world tours. Make it make sense
Album still not good. For Kendrick standards at least
Interscope click farms game is on point! damn!
Finally! Someone other than Drake gets the click farm comment treatment. And it happens to be Kendrick, even better!
Yeah but don’t get confused because Drake still looks like a big vagina in this rap ish unlike Kendrick.
Get Drake’s meat off your mouth buddy
Or maybe he legit has a loyal following. Not everything is about click farms, buddy
I hear he’s about to do another 55K this week because of the vinyl release. Lots of Ls for his critics
This is the worst album ive ever heard. All you black people should be ashamed of yourselves for co-signing this trash album. You black people are ruining hiphop. I know you hate him, but leave hiphop to eminem, he will take care of it properly!!!
Lmfao, nice try white boy
This album is for true hip hop lovers, if you don’t like this album it means you do not understand it, so juc stick with pop, Drake and trap coz you’re juc narrow minded you’re not able to understand him Kendrick lamar is Rap Music fam