Kendrick Lamar’s Catalog Up 154% in Streams Following Super Bowl Performance
Written by djfrosty on February 12, 2025
Welcome to Billboard Pro’s Trending Up newsletter, where we take a closer look at the songs, artists, curiosities and trends that have caught the music industry’s attention. Some have come out of nowhere, others have taken months to catch on, and all of them could become ubiquitous in the blink of a TikTok clip.
This week: The Super Bowl pours further gas on Kendrick Lamar’s still-blazing flames on streaming, while a Lady Gaga one-off gets emotionally resurrected and a Latto single gets a huge bump from a new remix with a big-name guest.
TV Off, Headphones On: Kendrick Lamar’s Daily Streams More Than Double Post-Super Bowl
Prior to the Super Bowl, Kendrick Lamar was already one of the biggest artists in the world, with five songs in the top 40 of last week’s Billboard Hot 100. Yet his explosive halftime performance at Super Bowl LIX on Sunday (Feb. 9) was a rising tide that lifted all of his respective boats on streaming services, from the superstar rapper’s latest album to his signature hits to his co-star at the Caesars Superdome in New Orleans.
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On the day after the Super Bowl (Feb. 10), Lamar’s streaming catalog earned 70.9 million official on-demand U.S. streams — a 153% increase from the previous Monday’s total (27.5 million on Feb. 3), according to initial reports provided by Luminate. “Not Like Us,” the Drake diss heard ‘round the world and the centerpiece of the halftime show, experienced an even greater percentage uptick: the former No. 1 hit rose a whopping 222% in daily streams, to 10.4 million on Monday.
Major spikes occurred for halftime highlights “Squabble Up” (up 159% in daily streams compared to the previous Monday), “Luther” (up 150%), “TV Off” (up 139%) and “Peekaboo” (up 186%). All of those songs are featured on Lamar’s most recent album, GNX, which earned a 141% total increase in daily streams across its dozen tracks, notching 31 million plays on Monday. Meanwhile, some of the older hits that Lamar revived for the halftime show scored even bigger bumps: “Humble” was up 242%, “DNA” was up 207% and “All the Stars” was up 295%, as fans returned to some of Lamar’s biggest hits from the previous decade.
And SZA, who joined Lamar on two songs during the showcase, saw her own streams soar thanks to her first Super Bowl halftime appearance. Last Monday, her catalog earned 19.1 million streams; a week later, that number reached 30.3 million streams, a 58% increase on the day after the big game. – JASON LIPSHUTZ
Lady Gaga Gets a ‘Hold’ on the iTunes Chart After Emotional Pre-Super Bowl Performance
Few would consider “Hold My Hand,” Lady Gaga’s 2022 soundtrack single from Top Gun: Maverick, to be a signature song of hers: The song charted respectably, reaching No. 49 on the Billboard Hot 100, but had little commercial staying power and is unlikely at this point to ever appear on a full Lady Gaga album. But it clearly has a time and a place – and that time and place may have proven to be at the Super Bowl LIX pre-show on Sunday night (Feb. 10), where she performed the piano ballad on Bourbon Street in New Orelans, as part of a tribute to the victims of numerous tragedies that struck American soul in the past year, namely the New Year’s Day attack on New Orleans that left 14 dead.
After NFL legends Tom Brady, Michael Strahan and Terry Bradshaw helped introduce the tribute and the performance, the tribute cut to Gaga at her piano, playing a stripped-down rendition of the Top Gun love theme that accentuated the song’s message of support and perseverance. It clearly resonated with the global audience watching: The song was up 149% in official on-demand U.S. streams over Feb. 9-10 (the day of and day after the Super Bowl) compared to the same two-day period a week before, according to initial reports provided by Luminate, and it was up to nearly 6,000 in digital sales – topping the real-time iTunes chart on Sunday night – up thousands of percent from the negligible amount it moved the prior equivalent period.
It probably won’t be the song most Little Monsters continue streaming in the lead-up to next month’s Mayhem release, but it might have some endurance in Gaga’s catalog after all. – ANDREW UNTERBERGER
Latto Eyes Yet Another ‘Sugar Honey Iced Tea’ Hit with Some Help from Playboi Carti
Between Grammy-nominated tracks like “Big Mama” and radio-conquering cuts like “Brokey,” Latto’s Sugar Honey Iced Tea album has been cranking out hits for several months now. Big Mama has shown no signs of slowing down in 2025, tapping Playboi Carti to boost the next single from her chart-topping third studio album.
Late last month (Jan. 27), Latto announced that she enlisted Carti for a new version of “Blick Sum.” The high-energy trap banger had been a fan-favorite since Sugar Honey Iced Tea dropped last summer (Aug. 9), but the Carti version lifted the single to new heights. In the week preceding Carti’s take on the song (Jan. 17-23), “Blick Sum” earned over 584,000 official on-demand U.S. streams, according to Luminate. The following week – which includes a shortened tracking week for the Carti version since it dropped on Jan. 28 – that number exploded by a staggering 541% to over 3.74 million official on-demand U.S. streams (all versions combined). In its first full tracking week including the new version (Jan. 31-Feb. 5), “Blick Sum” collected over 5.34 million official on-demand streams. Over the past two weeks, streams for “Blick Sum” have been up 815%.
The new version of “Blick Sum” isn’t technically a remix; it’s actually an earlier version of the song that leaked months ago. Latto ultimately settled on the solo version for her album, but the Carti version remained in circulation, further building anticipation for its eventual release. One TikTok sound containing Carti’s leaked verse collected over 45,000 posts since last October; there was even a quasi-viral dance choreographed to the sound.
Should “Blick Sum” continue its streaming ascent, the Carti-assisted track would become the sixth track from Sugar Honey Iced Tea to do so, the most of any of Latto’s studio albums. – KYLE DENIS