10. Kendrick Lamar

Kendrick Lamar closes 2024 at No. 10 on Billboard’s year-end Top Artists ranking – powered not by his new album GNX, but rather his sustained weekly Billboard 200 albums chart performance of four earlier albums, plus four hits on the weekly Billboard Hot 100 songs chart. (GNX debuted on the Billboard 200 at No. 1 on the Dec. 7, 2024-dated chart – more than a month after the 2024 year-end eligibility closed. The 2024 chart year ran from the charts dated Oct. 28, 2023, through Oct. 19, 2024.) GNX’s chart performance, along with its hit singles, including the Hot 100 No. 1 “Squabble Up,” will factor into the 2025 year-end charts.
2024 is only the second year in which Lamar has placed among the year’s top 10 on Top Artists; he last did so in 2017 when he wrapped at No. 4 (bolstered by that year’s No. 1 Billboard 200 album DAMN. and its No. 1 Hot 100 hit “Humble”).
During the 2024 chart year, four of Lamar’s previous albums – DAMN.; good kid, m.A.A.d city; Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers; and To Pimp a Butterfly – all spent time on the tally. Both DAMN. and good kid were top 20-charting titles in 2024 and hung out on the weekly chart for the full 52 weeks of the chart year.
On the Hot 100 during the chart year, Lamar notched four entries, two of which debuted at No. 1: “Like That” (with Future and Metro Boomin) and “Not Like Us,” as well as the No. 3-peaking “Euphoria” and the No. 12-peaking “Meet the Grahams.” (The four tracks were among a blitz of back-and-forth diss tracks between Lamar and Drake.) “Like That” and “Not Like Us” marked Lamar’s third and fourth career No. 1s on the chart and brought him back to the top slot for the first time since 2017’s “Humble.”


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