genre hiphop
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02/14/2025
Billboard rounded up rap, R&B and Afrobeats songs by Rema, MF DOOM, Snoop Dogg, Burna Boy, Ashanti, Nipsey Hussle and Queen Latifah that sample and interpolate Sade.
02/14/2025
2025 is already off to a wild start in the hip-hop world, and Billboard Unfiltered is back to break it all down with a new episode on Friday (Feb. 14), tackling all things Kendrick Lamar’s Super Bowl performance and Ye’s (formerly Kanye West) crashout.
Billboard‘s Damien Scott gave his stamp of approval to Lamar’s performance, as he loved to see Kendrick bring an “unadulterated rap show” to the biggest stage in America.
“We’ve had rappers before, but we’ve never had a rapper headline, and I’m glad it was Kendrick because what we got was a real rap show. He didn’t lean into his pop bag,” Scott said. “He kept his setlist outside of the SZA collabs it was super rap. You know how hard it is to rap ‘DNA’? I can’t imagine doing that in a leather jacket.”
Staff writer Kyle Denis enjoyed Kendrick remaining in his “imperial phase” and performing his new album rather than “mining for hits,” as we’ve seen plenty of other artists turn their Super Bowl sets into a greatest hits medley of sorts to appease the wide-ranging audience.
“You’re at the top of your game right now. As much as I wanted to hear the old stuff, I really respect what he did up there,” Denis said.
Unfiltered newcomer and hip-hop editor Angel Diaz admitted he was initially “underwhelmed” by the show, but after leaving the chaotic environment he was watching the game at and ran it back, he developed more of an appreciation for what Lamar delivered.
“It was impressive,” he said. “His wind, voice control — I kinda wanted some of the features to pop out like the mariachi singer, AzChike — I wanted to see him do ‘Peekaboo.’ When he announced SZA and people were trashing him, I thought she was gonna do more.”
Scott wonders how Kendrick’s set will translate to stadiums across the country on the Grand National Tour because of how “tightly wound” the songs are he performs. He even compared the tracks to “Swiss watches.”
Scott declared the Kendrick-Drake beef over and warned the 6 God to never say Kendrick’s name again going forward. “Don’t ever mention his name again. Just leave this alone, it’s over, bro,” he said.
Where does Ye go from here? West delivered a series of antisemitic, homophobic and hate-filled rants on X over the weekend ,which saw him praise Hitler and call for Diddy’s freedom.
“I don’t know how Ye gets back if you don’t have a built-in base to bolster you when you need it,” Scott adds. “Because we’re done. We should be the ones, ‘Get some help and we’re here for you.’ We’re like, ‘It’s over, peace.’”
Denis thinks we’ve hit a point where we have to ask ourselves if it’s worth covering Ye to this extent if he’s looking for attention.
Watch the full episode above.
In today’s episode of ‘Billboard Unfiltered,’ Billboard staffers Kyle Denis, Damien Scott, and Angel Diaz react to Kendrick Lamar’s Super Bowl halftime show, highlighting the best and controversial moments, discussing Ye’s X rants and more. What did you think of Kendrick’s performance? What do you think of Ye’s X rants? Let us know in the […]
It wasn’t all kisses and hugs on Drake and PartyNextDoor’s new collaborative album, $OME $EXY $ONGS 4 U, as on Friday (Feb. 14), the OVO captain had time to denounce not only his 2024 feud with Kendrick Lamar, but also his one-time friendship with Joe Budden.
The blockbuster album includes 21 songs — mostly R&B — with a few exceptions, most notably, “Gimme a Hug.” Here, Drake puts his rap muscles to work, first questioning Lamar’s lyricism and how it doesn’t spark any fanfare from the ladies at the club. “Cause if I die, it’s these n—as that become the sole beneficiary/ And what the f–k are they gon’ do with it?/ Have the girls up at 29 on stage twerking with a dictionary?” he says.
Not only does he claim to be over the smoldering beef with Lamar that included a whopping total of seven disses records last spring, but he’s shifting his energy toward making hits for the fans. “Damn, they be droppin’ s–t, but we be droppin’ harder s–t/ F–k a rap beef, I’m tryna get the party lit,” he spits.
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Drake also commended his Her Loss rap partner, 21 Savage, for his unwavering loyalty during the contentious feud before ultimately blitzing Budden. “Savage, you the only n—a checkin’ on me when we really in some s–t, brother/ Melyssa Ford, you a legend from the 6, hate to see you with a d–k-sucker.”
This isn’t the first time Drake has jabbed the famous podcaster this week. He posted an unflattering picture of Joe Budden on his Finsta account on Instagram, which irked the “Pump It Up” rapper.
“Drake, don’t shoot at me now that you’re ice cold,” he said on his eponymous podcast. “I’m not doing the back and forth with a corpse. Don’t go get shot all year and then pop up like Bernie in Weekend at Bernie’s wanting to shoot at me now. No n—a, go spin. Spin the f–king block.”
Listen to “Gimme a Hug” below.
02/14/2025
The OVO teammates partner for their first-ever full collaboration album.
02/14/2025
After Billboard introduced streaming data into the Billboard Hot 100 in the 2000s, and the first streaming-based ranking, On-Demand Streaming Songs, started in 2012, the Jan. 26, 2013, issue announced the arrival of Streaming Songs, which has become Billboard’s all-encompassing streaming ranking of record since.
Incorporating on-demand and programmed streaming totals (as compiled by data tracker Luminate), Streaming Songs began affording a look into the behaviors of millions of music fans, from diehards to casual listeners, on platforms that hadn’t existed prior to the 21st century. Especially key, it showed, for the first time, repeat curated listening in a way that tracking plays of records, tapes, CDs and MP3s hadn’t previously allowed.
Streaming Songs has been ever-changing, with streaming services added to the chart’s data feed. Early on, pop and hip-hop were streaming frontrunners. Since the turn of the 2020s, genres including country and Latin, in particular, have made significant inroads. Reflecting streaming’s growth overall, Macklemore & Ryan Lewis’ “Thrift Shop,” featuring Wanz, topped the inaugural Streaming Songs chart with 1.5 million U.S. streams. On the latest list (dated Feb. 15), Morgan Wallen’s “I’m the Problem” rules with 29.2 million official clicks.
As Billboard celebrates the top-performing artists, albums and songs of the first 25 years of the century since 2000, browse below, the acts with the most No. 1s on the Streaming Songs chart in that span.
Plus, check out Top Artists of the 21st Century, Top Billboard 200 Albums of the 21st Century and Billboard’s Top Hot 100 Songs of the 21st Century charts, as well as all coverage of Billboard’s 21st Century charts here.
Billboard’s Top Artists, Top Billboard 200 Albums and Top Hot 100 Songs of the 21st Century recaps reflect performance on weekly charts dated Jan. 1, 2000, through Dec. 28, 2024. The Top Artists category ranks the best-performing acts in that span based on activity on the Billboard 200 and Billboard Hot 100. (Titles released prior to mid-1999 are excluded, although such entries that appeared on the Billboard 200 or Hot 100 in that span contribute to the calculation of the Top Artists chart.)
20, Drake
The rap feud between Kendrick Lamar and Drake has broken out beyond the hip-hop world so that now even the mainstream media is all over it and keeping score, thanks to Lamar winning record and song of the year at the Grammys for his Drake diss track “Not Like Us” and his performance a week later at the Super Bowl Halftime Show.
While it’s unclear how this is all going to play out, music industry label executives know that rap feuds, in general, are good for business — as long as they don’t go too far.
As it is, Lamar’s high-profile performance is landing him the most ink, which in turn is driving plenty of business his way. It’s only five weeks into the year as tracked by Luminate, and already his recorded music catalog is closing in on 1 billion on-demand streams in the U.S., which it will probably reach next week; while his global streams are heading toward 2 billion. As of the week ending Feb. 6, those counts stand at 862.8 million (U.S.) and 1.69 billion (globally), according to Luminate. Overall, Lamar’s catalog has accumulated nearly 664,000 album consumption units in the U.S. in 2025 so far.
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That’s nearly three times larger than during the same period in 2024 when Lamar posted 233,000 album consumption units and almost 301 million on-demand streams in the U.S. and global streams of 650 million. Of course, besides his high-profile TV appearances this year, Lamar’s streaming and sales activity is still enjoying an added boost from riding in the afterglow of his recently released GNX album on Nov. 22.
But is all this attention also helping Drake? It’s unclear. Drake is slightly trailing Lamar in terms of U.S. album consumption units and streaming in 2025 so far. Album consumption units came in at 620,000 units, or 7.1% short of the Compton rapper; while his total of nearly 834 million on-demand streams is 3.5% below Lamar’s U.S. total and his global total of 1.529 billion is 10.3% short of his musical rival’s.
Besides that, Drake’s 2025 performance is also down from how his catalog performed in the first five weeks of 2024, when he accumulated 930,000 album consumption units; and, within that, 1.281 billion streams in the U.S. Those 2024 numbers are 50% and 53.6% greater, respectively, than his U.S. activity in 2025 during the same period; while his 2024 global on-demand stream total was 2.246 billion, or nearly 47% greater than this year.
Drake, of course, does not have the added momentum of having released a new album at the end of 2024. (He is releasing his PartyNextDoor collaborative EP, Some Sexy Songs 4 U, this Friday.) Not only that, his current year’s numbers are competing against his prior year’s numbers which did have that benefit thanks to the afterglow of his eighth studio album, For All the Dogs, which was released on Oct. 6, 2023.
Still, the above numbers do not reflect the impact that Lamar’s Super Bowl performance is having on the activity of his and Drake’s catalogs. Those numbers, for the week ending Feb. 13, won’t be available from Luminate until Monday (Feb. 17).
This is all short-term, of course. Looking at the two artists’ career numbers, Drake swamps Lamar, even though the “Just Like Us rapper” has pretty impressive counts in his own right. Over the past 10 years, Drake has gone toe-to-toe with only Taylor Swift in claiming the title of the biggest artist in the U.S., if not the world, at least as far as recorded music activity goes.
Drake and Lamar’s first commercial releases came out within about a year of each other. Drake’s debut album, Thank Me Later, hit the streets in June 2010, while Lamar’s Section 8.0 album came out in July 2011. Since then, Drake has issued eight albums and Lamar six, and each has also released mixtapes, EPs, collaborations and/or compilations and soundtracks.
By the end of 2024, Drake’s catalog has accumulated nearly 80.7 million album consumption units in the U.S., versus Lamar’s 29.1 million album consumption units, according to Luminate. In fact, the combined activity of just three of Drake’s studio albums alone is higher than Lamar’s total, as each of those albums — Take Care, Scorpion and Views — have garnered slightly over 10 million album consumption units a piece. Meanwhile, Lamar’s best album showings come from his major-label debut good kid, m.A.A.d city, with 9.3 million album consumption units, and DAMN, at nearly 9 million units.
(These career numbers exclude collaborations where most of the collaborators are each considered a primary artist but do include songs where artists are “featured” on a Drake or Lamar song because Luminate credits those songs’ activity to just the primary artist. Album consumption units count each album sale as one album consumption unit; while track equivalent albums, whereby 10 tracks sold equal one album consumption unit; and stream equivalent albums, whereby 1,250 paid subscriber streams equal one album consumption unit, or 3,750 ad-supported streams equal one album consumption unit. Also, Luminate only tracks album consumption units in North America; globally, it only tracks streams and downloads, not album consumption units.)
Within the album consumption unit numbers, Drake’s streaming total in the U.S. is 84 billion and 127 billion globally, as of the Luminate year ended Jan. 2, 2025. Meanwhile, Lamar’s U.S. career streaming total is nearly 29 billion and more than 47 billion globally.
Those numbers are extremely impressive given that 2015 was the first year in which streaming’s impact was widely felt. While huge rock stars, not counting pop artists, are lucky to break the 1 billion on-demand streams milestone in the U.S. each year — and none of them yet appear to have broken the 2 billion mark in the U.S. in a single year — these days, R&B and hip-hop artists regularly hit the multi-billion on-demand stream mark each year — usually led by Drake.
Over the past five years — from 2020 to 2024 — Drake’s U.S. streams have totaled 46 billion, for an annual average of 9.2 billion streams, while globally he’s averaged 15.9 billion streams per year. In contrast, Lamar’s U.S. stream count during that same period averages 3.29 billion, while his annual global count averages nearly 6.4 billion streams. Any way you cut it — by album consumption units or by stream count — Drake’s activity over the course of his career, or even just within the 2020 to 2024 period, is more than twice that of Lamar’s.
So even though Lamar is the top dog this year when measured against Drake’s activity, it remains to be seen if this rap feud changes the dynamics of whose swagger — Drake’s, the reigning champ, or Lamar’s — can be backed up long-term. Only time will tell.
Offset is spending his Valentine’s Day loving his deep pockets on his new single “Ten,” which he dropped on Friday (Feb. 14) via Motown Records. “I don’t need you, I got money/ I don’t miss you, I got money/ Love you, but not like money,” he raps with a mischievous, sing-song cadence. “Ten” arrives two […]
After winning performer of the year (dancehall) at last year’s Caribbean Music Awards, Jamaican reggae sensation Dexta Daps is set on securing the next Valentine’s Day anthem with his new “Lockdown” single. Over waltz-evoking guitars, Dexta forgoes the fete to spend some intimate one-on-one time with his special lady singing, “I’ve been staying home lately […]
The long-awaited joint album from Drake and PartyNextDoor is finally here. The years-in-the-making project, $ome $exy $ongs 4 U hit streaming services on Friday (Feb. 14) to spice up Valentine’s Day for the lovers and hopeless romantics out there. Explore See latest videos, charts and news See latest videos, charts and news $ome $exy $ongs […]