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Drake gets his revenge — on the charts, anyway

This week, a familiar face knocks Kendrick Lamar out of the top spot with an album debuting at No. 1 — Drake's $ome $exy $ongs 4 U.
Prince Williams/WireImage
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WireImage
This week, a familiar face knocks Kendrick Lamar out of the top spot with an album debuting at No. 1 — Drake's $ome $exy $ongs 4 U.

Kendrick Lamar won last year's rap war with Drake by just about any measure, but this week, Drake gets a small measure of revenge: His new album with producer PARTYNEXTDOOR, $ome $exy $ongs 4 U, knocks Lamar's GNX out of the No. 1 spot. On the singles chart, Drake extends an all-time record, but Lamar still has four of the top five songs, with "Luther (feat. SZA)" displacing his own "Not Like Us" at No. 1.

TOP ALBUMS

Last week, Kendrick Lamar took his latest victory lap — not to be confused with the victory lap he took winning five Grammys, or the victory lap he took as the Super Bowl's halftime headliner — as his album GNX returned to No. 1. That album was also joined by two other catalog titles (2017's DAMN. and 2012's good kid, m.A.A.d city) in the top 10. Lamar's 2024 smash "Not Like Us," in which he lyrically disembowels his nemesis Drake, even returned to No. 1 on the Hot 100.

This week, Lamar still has two albums in the top 10GNX slides from No. 1 to No. 3, while DAMN. slips from No. 9 to No. 10 — but a familiar face knocks Lamar out of the top spot with an album debuting at No. 1. $ome $exy $ongs 4 U is a full-length collaboration between the producer PARTYNEXTDOOR and Drake, who apparently didn't get the memo about Lamar's diss tracks banishing him to oblivion.

Drake's return to No. 1 comes with a major milestone attached: $ome $exy $ongs 4 U has just become the rapper's 14th No. 1 album, a figure matched by just two solo artists in the history of the Billboard charts. Those would be Jay-Z and Taylor Swift, which should give you a sense of just how big you have to be to chart 14 albums at No. 1. Drake, Jay-Z and Swift trail just one artist in this category: The Beatles, who've released a staggering 19 chart-topping albums and compilations.

In their respective long careers — Drake first hit the Billboard 200 in 2010, while Lamar did so a year later — the two artists have never swapped the No. 1 spot until this week. For the moment, the top 10 is big enough for the two of them.

There's one other surge worth noting this week, as Sabrina Carpenter's Short n' Sweet zooms from No. 7 to No. 2 thanks to a Valentine's Day reissue that added five bonus tracks to the 2024 blockbuster. Included among them: a reworking of the chart-topper "Please Please Please" in which Carpenter duets with none other than Dolly Parton.

TOP SONGS

Last week, Kendrick Lamar reaped the rewards of a colossal Super Bowl bump, as "Not Like Us" surged from No. 15 to No. 1 and the rapper scored four of the week's top five songs. This week… he's still got four of the week's top five songs, but two of them switch spots at the top of the chart. With "Not Like Us" slipping to No. 2, the new No. 1 song in the country is "Luther (feat. SZA)," which marks Lamar's fourth different chart-topping song in the span of just 11 months. (The others are "Squabble Up" and "Like That," his collaboration with Future and Metro Boomin.)

Still, the chart success of $ome $exy $ongs 4 U is reverberating on the Hot 100 singles chart, as two Drake songs ("Gimme a Hug" and "Nokia") debut at No. 6 and No. 10, respectively. Those tracks add to a pretty colossal Drake milestone — more on that in a moment — while feeding a flood that's landed all 21 tracks from $ome $exy $ongs 4 U on the Hot 100. Not bad for a guy whose rivalry with Lamar didn't quite pan out as intended.

Speaking of Drake v. Kendrick, SZA has scored a strange honor of her own this week: She's now hit No. 1 while collaborating with both artists. The first was back in 2023, when she performed a feature on Drake's chart-topper "Slime You Out," and while she's had numerous hits with Lamar — including two other songs in this week's top 15 — "Luther" marks their first-ever No. 1 hit together.

Of course, SZA isn't the only chart-topper to have scored hits with Drake. Back in 2013, Drake appeared on several songs with none other than Kendrick Lamar — A$AP Rocky's "F***** Problems" and Lamar's "Poetic Justice" — that peaked at No. 8 and No. 26, respectively. Alas, those were simpler times.

WORTH NOTING

It's a Drake kinda week, so let's stick with this week's top chart story for one more moment.

As noted above, Drake has scored two new top 10 songs: "Gimme a Hug" and "Nokia." Those tracks are now the rapper's 79th and 80th to hit the top 10 — an all-time chart record by a healthy margin.

How healthy? In second place, with a mere 59 songs to land in the top 10, is Taylor Swift, followed by Madonna, with 38. The Beatles, with the band's 19 chart-topping albums and compilations, only mustered 35 songs in the top 10 and are therefore no-account slackers. Rihanna's got 32, Michael Jackson's got 30, Elton John's got 29, and on down the line, as hall-of-fame names round out a list of superstars who've racked up a run of more than two dozen top 10 songs. But… really, 80? Is Drake really nearly three times as popular as Mariah Carey (28), Stevie Wonder (28) or Janet Jackson (27)?

The answer, as so many recent-era chart mysteries do, lies in streaming. Until the '90s, songs weren't eligible to hit the Hot 100 if they hadn't been released as singles, and until the '00s, songs could only chart if they'd accumulated a sufficient amount of sales and radio airplay. Streaming tore open the floodgates, creating an environment where a mega-blockbuster album — say, Taylor Swift's The Tortured Poets Department or Drake's Certified Lover Boy — could flood most or all of a given week's top 10 songs by itself. (Certified Lover Boy charted nine songs in the top 10 its first week, while The Tortured Poets Department locked down Nos. 1 through 14.)

Make no mistake: Placing 80 songs in the top 10 is a remarkable feat. But it's a bit like changing the rules of Major League Baseball to give Aaron Judge 30 at-bats a game, then marveling when he sets the all-time home-run record.

Copyright 2025 NPR

Stephen Thompson is a writer, editor and reviewer for NPR Music, where he speaks into any microphone that will have him and appears as a frequent panelist on All Songs Considered. Since 2010, Thompson has been a fixture on the NPR roundtable podcast Pop Culture Happy Hour, which he created and developed with NPR correspondent Linda Holmes. In 2008, he and Bob Boilen created the NPR Music video series Tiny Desk Concerts, in which musicians perform at Boilen's desk. (To be more specific, Thompson had the idea, which took seconds, while Boilen created the series, which took years. Thompson will insist upon equal billing until the day he dies.)
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