Congrats to Dot, TDE & Dr. Dre!
Kendrick Lamar, Top Dawg Entertainment and Dr. Dre get to celebrate this weekend, learning the official first week sales for DAMN. In just six days, King Kunta has earned the highest debut for any artist this year, surpassing Drake’s More Life release last month, that achieved 500,000 thousand copies. According to Nielsen Music, the Los Angeles rapper garnered 603,000 equivalent album units (353,000 in traditional album sales), becoming his biggest career debut to date.
This marks his third consecutive no. 1 album on the Billboard charts, joining 2015’s To Pimp a Butterfly and last year’s untitled unmastered project. Initially, industry insiders expected the new Kendrick album to bow out with 550,000; but word of mouth and having his hit-single “HUMBLE” as the official theme track for the NBA Playoffs, shattered that forecast.
He also earned the second-largest streaming week for an album ever, surpassing 340.6 million streams for the 14-track LP. Only Drake’s More Life playlist project registered more digital plays, at 384.8 million song streams. With the Compton emcee confirming earlier this weekend that he will have new music on the way, as a featured guest artist on pending TDE projects, he now gets to enjoy this milestone achievement before he hits the road later this year.
His mother even hilariously congratulated him on success, which you peep below.