What was the best-selling rap album of 2025?
2025 was another big year for hip-hop, with huge rap stars like Cardi B, Playboi Carti, Clipse, NBA YoungBoy, and Tyler, the Creator all releasing new albums. But which of them, if any, managed to sell the most copies?
Obviously a bunch of smaller hip-hop artists released music throughout 2025, too, as did older legends like Nas and DJ Premier, Ghostface Killah, Raekwon, De La Soul and many others. But gone are the days when these stars of the ’90s can move albums like the younger generation.
The streaming figures speak to this fact. In terms of streams on Spotify, 2025 belonged to the likes of Travis Scott, Drake, Doechii and Tyler, The Creator. Kanye West, despite his many controversies, remains a popular artist that people keep returning to, while Kendrick Lamar is unassailable.
According to figures compiled by Hip Hop All Day, Kendrick’s latest album, 2024’s GNX, was the most streamed album of last year, having clocked up 2.98 billion listens. K.Dot appears on the list several more times, with older albums DAMN. achieving 1.45 billion streams across 2025 and good kid m.A.A.d city getting 1.08 billion. Lower down on the list is Mr Morale & the Big Steppers, with 638 million listens.
Because of the nature of streaming, older albums can remain high up on these end-of-year lists. Kendrick, then, did really well in 2025, as did Kanye, whose nearly 20-year-old album Graduation was apparently the fourth most-streamed rap album on Spotify last year. It was listened to 1.5 billion times.
Only one album that was actually released in 2025 made the top five of Spotify’s most-streamed rap albums of the year. That was Playboi Carti’s Music, released in March, which achieved 2.16 billion streams and managed to secure second place, behind Kendrick’s GNX. To be fair to Kendrick, GNX was released in late 2024, so it still, technically, was a new work in 2025.
Streaming figures are one thing, but in terms of sales, too, Kendrick was on top. GNX, despite its release in November 2024, sold strongly throughout the entire year that followed, reportedly moving more than two million units. Billboard listed it at number nine on its year-end top album sales chart, making it the only pure hip-hop album to make it into the top ten.
Tyler, the Creator also sold well throughout 2025, according to the Billboard list, with his new album Don’t Tap the Glass coming in at number 34. But the weird thing is that several of his older albums seemed to sell way better. Flower Boy, from 2017, is at number 30, while 2024’s Chromakopia and 2019’s Igor sit at 18 and 17 respectively.
Album sales don’t necessarily play out as one might expect—Michael Jackson’s Thriller and Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours were also among the top 30 best-selling albums of 2025—but it is undeniable that Kendrick, both commercially and artistically, continued to rule the rap game last year.