No surprise this week: Kendrick Lamar rules the charts

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Kendrick Lamar released his sixth album, GNX, without warning on Nov. 22. On this week's Billboard pop charts, its songs landed him the Top 5 spots on the Hot 100 and the No. 1 album.

This week, there was a chance that we could have seen an all-time chart record get set, as long as Shaboozey could hang onto the top spot on the Billboard Hot 100. But while he held off the anticipated surge of holiday music, he was denied a 20th week at No. 1 — and sole possession of the all-time record for most weeks at the top — thanks to a dominant performance by a surprise album. Kendrick Lamar's GNX topped the albums chart, snagged 12 of the Hot 100's top 27 songs and locked down the entire Top 5. He's just the fourth artist ever to manage that feat.

TOP ALBUMS

We'll get to Kendrick Lamar's chart heroics in a moment, but first, last week brought a flood of releases by fresh faces in the Top 10: K-pop records by ATEEZ and BTS's Jin (as well as a deluxe reissue by ENHYPEN), Puerto Rican rapper and singer Rauw Alejandro and even the return of Linkin Park. This week, only one of the new arrivals managed to stick around. Alejandro's Cosa Nuestra dipped just one spot, from No. 6 to No. 7, but the rest tumble as holiday albums rise. ATEEZ slips from No. 1 to No. 24, Linkin Park falls from No. 2 to No. 30, ENHYPEN plunges from No. 7 to No. 54, and Jin — who last week became the seventh and final BTS member to place a solo album in the Top 10 — drops from No. 4 all the way to No. 83.

Replacing ATEEZ and Linkin Park in the top spots are two pop-cultural juggernauts. Kendrick Lamar's GNX, which came out on Nov. 22 with no advance warning, debuts at No. 1. Fueled mostly by streaming — it was a surprise release, so sales of physical copies haven't yet entered into the equation — the album is a dominant chart-topper with 319,000 "equivalent album units," compared to 139,000 for the album at No. 2. ("Equivalent album units" is Billboard-speak for the cocktail of streaming and sales that informs each week's ranking.)

As Lamar prepares to perform at the 2025 Super Bowl in February — and as physical editions of the album roll out — GNX looks to be in for a long chart life, given the self-perpetuating nature of streaming algorithms and the rapper's dominant cultural presence in 2024. All 12 of GNX's songs land in the top 27 spots of the Hot 100, even as holiday songs begin to flood the chart; that's no small feat.

The other Top 10 debut belongs to a different pop-cultural powerhouse: the movie Wicked, whose box-office glory — not to mention the fans it's made as one of the longest-running Broadway musicals in history — has helped fuel its soundtrack's debut at No. 2. It's the highest debut ever registered by the soundtrack for a movie adaptation of a stage musical, though a few others (most recently the Lés Miserables soundtrack from a decade or so ago) have reached those chart heights after debuting in lower positions.

Besides Rauw Alejandro at No. 7, the remainder of the Top 10 belongs to old reliables: Sabrina Carpenter's Short n' Sweet rises from No. 5 to No. 3; Tyler, The Creator's Chromakopia dips from No. 3 to No. 4, Billie Eilish's Hit Me Hard and Soft climbs from No. 9 to No. 5, and Gracie Abrams' The Secret of Us rises from No. 8 to No. 6. Two former chart-toppers return to the Top 10 — Taylor Swift's The Tortured Poets Department and Morgan Wallen's One Thing at a Time — at Nos. 8 and 9, respectively, while Chappell Roan's The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess holds steady at No. 10.

TOP SONGS

Last week, Shaboozey's "A Bar Song (Tipsy)" tied the all-time record of 19 weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, set by Lil Nas X's "Old Town Road (feat. Billy Ray Cyrus)." And, had Kendrick Lamar not released GNX when he did — if only he'd waited just one more week! — Shaboozey would own the record outright.

Instead, Kendrick Lamar holds the entire Top 5 on the Billboard Hot 100 — making him just the fourth artist ever to do so in a single week, after Taylor Swift, The Beatles and Lamar's nemesis, Drake. "Squabble Up" sits in the top spot, followed by "TV Off (feat. Lefty Gunplay)," "Luther (feat. SZA)," "Wacced Out Murals" and "Hey Now (feat. Dody6)." Shaboozey drops from No. 1 to No. 6 and Lady Gaga and Bruno Mars' "Die With a Smile" dips from No. 2 to No. 7 to make room — which, again, means Shaboozey's quest for the record was foiled solely by Lamar. (Incidentally, Shaboozey would also have had 20 weeks at No. 1 if Lamar's "Not Like Us" hadn't surged to the top spot for a week after the release of its official video in July.)

Debuting at No. 8 and No. 9 are two more songs from GNX: "Reincarnated" and "Man at the Garden," respectively. And at No. 10 is a glimpse at the Hot 100's short-term future: Mariah Carey's "All I Want for Christmas Is You," which climbs from No. 16 to No. 10 — and would sit all the way up at No. 3 were it not for Lamar. If Carey isn't at No. 1 this time next week, it'll be a serious upset.

One last note on Lamar's huge 2024: "Squabble Up" is the rapper's third No. 1 single of the year, after "Not Like Us" and "Like That," his collaboration with Future and Metro Boomin. Though Ariana Grande, Post Malone and Morgan Wallen have each notched two chart-toppers in 2024, Lamar stands alone with three.

WORTH NOTING

This was destined to be a wild week on the Hot 100, as far as simple chart movement is concerned, simply due to the scheduled influx of the usual holiday standards. And, true to form, the perennials are all roaring back, more or less in lockstep with the way they roared back in December 2023: A dozen holiday songs occupy the top half of the Hot 100 — Billboard's system only recognizes old holiday songs if they're registering at No. 50 or higher — and all 12 of them charted in the previous holiday cycle.

What wasn't expected as of, say, two weeks ago was the sudden arrival of 12 new Kendrick Lamar songs — not counting "Not Like Us," which is still hanging in at No. 30 — in the upper regions of the charts. The combination of GNX's dominance and the holiday surge is that songs that have been immovable for months are suddenly experiencing steep declines. Teddy Swims' "Lose Control," which has been in the Top 10 for 45 weeks (that's the second-longest run of all time), drops from No. 4 to No. 16. Sabrina Carpenter's "Espresso," one of 2024's most inescapable hits, moves from No. 5 to No. 20. The apparent collapses are everywhere, but mere chart positioning can be misleading; Billie Eilish's "Birds of a Feather" may have dipped from No. 3 to No. 12, but the pop radio stations that haven't converted to Christmas programming are still playing it endlessly, as anyone near a working radio can testify. It's just been overwhelmed by two even-more-unstoppable forces.

All those collisions have created an unusual byproduct when you examine which songs have received "bullets" — that's the terminology Billboard uses when a song is experiencing momentum, which is where the phrase "number one with a bullet" comes from. ROSÉ and Bruno Mars' "APT." has a bullet this week, to reflect its airplay and streaming growth. But the song drops from No. 15 to No. 22 — down seven spots, with a bullet. Here's a prediction: That track is set to take up looooong-term residence in the Top 10 once the holidays are behind us.

Speaking of predictions, some of them are just too easy: 1) Next week, holiday songs will be everywhere, dominating the top half of the Hot 100. And 2) Most of Kendrick Lamar's new songs, especially the deep cuts, will slide down the chart now that the initial post-release streaming surge has subsided.

But there's a 3) in there, too, and she's barely been mentioned thus far: 3) GNX's stiffest challenge for No. 1 on the Billboard 200 next week will come not from Christmas music, but from… Taylor Swift, whose venerable blockbuster The Tortured Poets Department just got pressed in deluxe vinyl and CD versions that are available exclusively at Target. (The album itself has been available in physical formats since its release in April, but the Anthology edition — the one that sprawls out from 16 songs to 31 — is only now available for physical purchase.) The Tortured Poets Department was already lying in wait at No. 8, but with Black Friday sales factored in, it could knock even a powerhouse like Kendrick Lamar off his perch as quickly as he got there.