Kendrick Lamar Unseats Drake as ‘DAMN’ Becomes Biggest Debut of 2017

Hip Hop fans know that Kendrick Lamar and Drake have been taking subliminal shots at one another constantly in their music, and some even suspected that Kendrick threw some verbal jabs at Drake and Big Sean on “The Heart Part 4.”

So it’s no surprise that fans of both have been arguing back and forth on social media now that Kendrick’s latest album has unseated Drake as the best-selling album of 2017 thus far.

However, Drake continues to dominate in streaming.

Hits Daily Double writes:

Kendrick Lamar’s DAMN. (TDE/Aftermath/Interscope) has officially scored the year’s biggest debut, landing on the Sales Plus Streaming (SPS) Chart with a massive 610k. He bests Drake’s More Life (YMCMB/Republic), which—with 505k—held the record for biggest SPS bow until now. But Lamar also breaks Ed Sheeran’s record for the best-selling first week of the year; Divide (Atlantic) opened with 350k in album sales and DAMN. has done so with around 362k.

In the age of streaming, it’s interesting that DAMN.’s debut, which also racks up over 300m streams, will be made up of over 60% in sales (fans were snapping up CDs for signing at the pop-up in-store at a Compton Best Buy on 4/20). Sheeran’s sales to streams ratio was even higher, at over 70%.

Speaking of higher, we haven’t been able to walk in a straight line since Wednesday.

By the way, for those of you keeping close score, Drake is still the streaming-only champ. More Life pulled in 385m streams, marking the first time that tracks from an album have been streamed over 300m times in one week.