Credit: Alamy

Kendrick Lamar is the rarest of contemporary beasts: not only is he considered a pioneer of rap, a musical genius who has taken the genre to entirely new places, but his commercial sales are also absolutely massive.

Striking a balance between those two things can be tough, and few artists manage to achieve it. But Kendrick has sold millions of albums throughout his career, becoming immensely wealthy and popular, all while retaining his artistic integrity. But, of those high-selling albums, which has actually sold the most?

According to the website BestSellingAlbums.org, Kendrick has, throughout his career, sold more than 10.2million albums, of which 7.5m were sold in the US and a further 1.06m were sold in the UK. Given that Kendrick’s career has been rooted in the digital era, those are some healthy figures. But, of all his six studio albums, it is Damn that has sold the most. There have apparently been 4.2m copies of it sold—not far off half of his total record sales.

Damn was an immediate hit upon its release in 2017, topping the charts in the US and Canada and reaching number two in a bunch of other countries, including the UK, Australia, Denmark, Ireland, Netherlands, and Sweden. It was critically acclaimed, too, considered by plenty of critics to not only be the best album of 2017 but of the whole 2010s. Pertinently, while it was an immediate success for Kendrick, its popularity has never really waned in the years since its release, which means its sales have been steady for a long time. 

Damn has periodically seen surges of interest through the years, which, ultimately, means it has now been certified triple platinum. The first real jolt in the album’s post-release came when it won the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 2018, making Kendrick the first non-classical or jazz musician to ever win the prize in its then 75-year history. The triumph also induced a spike of interest in the album, which naturally boosted its sales. Thousands of people bought Damn following the Pulitzer win, and streaming figures shot up, too.

In more recent times, the album has done well out of Kendrick’s feud with Drake. While all of Kendrick’s albums have been boosted by the attention created by the furore, it was Damn that saw the most interest, according to a report in Forbes published last May. Streams and sales of the record surged, which is one of several reasons why Kendrick is widely considered to have emerged as the winner of the beef with Drake; his career greatly benefited from what happened.

As for the rest of Kendrick’s albums, it is 2017’s Good Kid, MAAD City that comes in at number two, with around 3.7m sales. To Pimp a Butterfly, released in 2015, is at number three, with 1.5m sales, fourth is his 2011 debut, Section 80, with 500,000 sales, and fifth is Mr Morale & the Big Steppers from 2022, with 110,000. The figures for his latest album, GNX, released last November, are as yet unclear, but it spent time at number one in plenty of countries, including the US and UK. Needless to say, it sold well—but it seems fair to presume it won’t ever hit the lofty heights of Damn.