Drake Surpasses Kendrick Lamar In Monthly Spotify Listeners After Beef

Drake has had a bad summer. He lost the battle to Kendrick Lamar. He also had to sit around while Lamar’s “Not Like Us” became the biggest song in the country. It played so many places that Steph Curry got tired of hearing it. Lamar was not only winning the discourse war, though, he was winning the streaming war as well. His numbers were up during the battle, while Drake’s were noticeably down. The tables have turned, though. The 6 God is regaining his footing in a post-“Not Like Us” world, according to Spotify.

Hip Hop All Day confirmed that Drake reached a major milestone on August 9. The rapper notched 74.9 million monthly listeners on Spotify. This made him the rapper with the second-most monthly listeners on the entire platform. More importantly, though, it meant he surpassed Kendrick Lamar. K. Dot had been on a role throughout May and June. He accrued 74.7 million monthly listeners during the beef. As noted by a Billboard article, the success of Lamar’s diss songs actually boosted streams for his previous albums as well. The Compton emcee’s entire catalog was up 49% from May 3-6. Drake’s conversely, was down by 5%.

The damage the battle did to Drake’s credibility is one thing. The damage the battle did to his streaming numbers, however, is another. Meaning, it didn’t do much damage. He’s still one of the most artists in the world, as evidenced by colossal numbers he’s doing on Spotify. Eminem is the only rapper who has more monthly listeners that Drake. Tellingly, Eminem is the only rapper who has sold more albums that Drake in terms of physical units. That being said, the 6 God has Slim Shady in the overall streams department. Em recently reached 50 billion overall streams on Spotify, which made him the second rapper to do so. Want to guess the first? You’re correct. Drake stands atop the Spotify all-time streams list with an eye popping 101 billion streams.

It gets better for Drizzy. The Toronto superstar recently broke another Spotify record. According to That Grape Juice, Drake became the first artist in history to have 17 individual songs pass one billion streams. “Jimmy Cooks,” the rapper’s number-one single from 2022, was the one that pushed it over the edge. He was previously tied for the Spotify record of 16 songs with Rihanna and Bad Bunny, but know he stands alone. And it sounds like new Drake music is right around the corner.