The end of the year is usually relatively slow when it comes to new music drops, but Kendrick Lamar spiced up the final weeks of 2024 with one of the year’s biggest releases: GNX. Aside from being a cap on Lamar’s culture-dominating year, it’s yet another chart success for the rapper: On the new Billboard 200 chart dated December 7, GNX debuts at No. 1.
The album is now Lamar’s fifth total and consecutive chart-topping album. GNX earned 319,000 equivalent album units in the US during the week ending November 28, which is the sixth-biggest debut week of 2024. It also had the third-biggest streaming week for any album this year, with 379.72 million on-demand official streams for the project’s songs.
GNX follows Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers (in 2022), Damn (2017), Untitled Unmastered (2016), and To Pimp A Butterfly (2015) as No. 1 albums for Lamar.
Debuting right behind GNX at No. 2 is the Ariana Grande– and Cynthia Erivo-led Wicked soundtrack. This is the biggest-ever debut for the soundtrack of a film adaptation of a stage musical. The last time such a soundtrack debuted in the top five was back in 2003, when Chicago debuted at No. 4 (before peaking at No. 2 the next week). The most recent stage-to-screen musical soundtrack to be in the top two, debut week or not, was Les Miserables, which was No. 1 for a week in 2013.
