Though things have since calmed down, the sonic altercation between Kendrick Lamar and Drake is adamantly going to be remembered as one of the most iconic moments in modern hip-hop history. Forcing even the most casual of listeners into a debate about who holds the top spot in the rap game, if some out there are still struggling to decide who truly reigns, one good metric to consider might be digital streams.
As the adage goes, men lie but numbers don’t, and in this case, streaming platforms can indeed give us a rough idea of how popular and impactful an artist is, or has been, throughout his career. And when it comes to the (seemingly) now-over debacle between the two North American MCs, it seems that both can boast some pretty impressive statistics.
While Drake stands head and shoulders above the rest of his peers as the most listened-to male artist of the past decade on Spotify —having amassed a staggering 28 billion total streams over the past 10 years — his Californian counterpart on the other hand holds another record for having the fastest rap song reach 100,000,000 streams on Spotify.
The historic accomplishment, achieved through the release of Not Like Us in only nine days, sent ripples across the industry by propelling the ad hominem attack on Drake’s cultural and ethnic background to a global hit. Rather than simply add itself to the long list of diss tracks, instead, it found its place in clubs and trending sounds on social media platforms, quickly becoming an anthem of its own and a blunt rally against what many would refer to as culture vultures.
But that’s not all. The song, which had already succeeded in significantly tarnishing the Toronto singer’s reputation, dealt an even harsher blow by dethroning one of Drake’s tracks as the fastest song to reach the 100 million benchmark on Spotify, namely God’s Plan, which held the record until now.
While congratulations could be in order for Lamar, as Not Like Us continues to make waves and appears to have brought a definitive end to the clash, we’ve opted to focus on the other rap hits that have reached the same milestone in the past.
Below, the top 10 rap songs that reached 100 million streams on Spotify faster than any others.
