Kendrick Lamar’s first-week ‘GNX’ sales revealed
Kendrick Lamar‘s new album, GNX, has debuted at number one on the Billboard 200 following its surprise release on November 22nd.
The project, which dropped in the middle of the day rather than midnight, opened with 319,000 units in its first week, making it the sixth-largest debut of the year despite being a surprise release with no promotion.
Billboard reports that GNX‘s first-week numbers consist of 285,000 SEA units (379.72 million on-demand streams of its songs) and 32,000 pure album sales through digital downloads. The total makes it the third-largest streaming week of 2024.
In comparison, Kendrick Lamar’s last album, Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers, debuted at number one on the Billboard 200 in 2022 with 295,000 units in its first week. Of that figure, 35,000 were pure album sales and 258,000 were from streaming as the result of 343.02 million streams.
K.Dot’s two albums prior to that, DAMN. and To Pimp a Butterfly, debuted at number one on the Billboard 200, with good kid, m.A.A.d city just missing out at number two. His compilation album untitled unmastered. also debuted at number one in 2016.
GNX is made up of 12 tracks with features from SZA, Roddy Ricch, Hitta J3 and many others. Production was mostly handled by Sounwave and Jack Antonoff, with producers such as Mustard and Kamasi Washington also contributing.
Outside of Billboard numbers, the album also earned over 44.2 million first-day streams on the global Spotify chart, averaging over 3.6 million streams per song. Fans might have another reason to be excited soon, with ‘TV Off’ collaborator Lefty Gunplay recently claiming that Kendrick Lamar would be releasing a deluxe version of GNX.
“He has some stuff,” he said. “We did two, three songs. He has some stuff in the chamber. He told me that we’re going to work again, for sure. I know he’s got a deluxe version coming out. He’s very secretive.”
He added, “Everybody thought that I was playing — I wasn’t, though, as much as I wanted to tell everybody,” he said. “I almost blew it. ‘Cause we signed NDAs and I couldn’t wait to tell everybody. We had to sign NDAs and they were like, ‘You’re going [in the studio] with Kendrick.’”