Kendrick Lamar Debut ‘Good Kid, M.A.A.D. City’ Has Spent A Decade On the Billboard 200 Chart
Debut Kendrick Lamar album Good Kid, M.A.A.D. City has spent 520 weeks on the Billboard 200 since being released in 2012.
Ten years later, debut Kendrick Lamar album Good Kid, M.A.A.D. City is still making history. Per the chart history for Lamar’s 2012 album, Good Kid, M.A.A.D. City has spent 520 weeks on the chart, equaling 10 consecutive years. Three weeks after its release, the album peaked at No. 2 on November 10, 2012, since becoming the longest-charting hip-hop album in history.
During its first week, Good Kid, M.A.A.D. City sold 242,000 copies, the highest first-week sales for a male hip-hop artist in 2012. The album also marked Lamar’s first Grammy-nominated effort, being nominated in seven categories in total, including Best New Artist, Album of the Year, Best Rap Album and Best Rap Performance (“Swimming Pools (Drank)”). The Compton native controversially lost each nomination, winning his first two Grammy Awards in 2015 for Best Rap Performance and Best Rap Song (“i”).
This month, Good Kid, M.A.A.D. City topped Rolling Stone‘s greatest concept albums list, with music critic Mosi Reeves praising Lamar’s debut for being a “complex tale of how Lamar finally manages resist his city’s gangland traps and embrace his Christian faith. Subconsciously but importantly, the album eschews the G-funk style that defined L.A. hip-hop for decades.”
Ten years removed from his 2012 classic, Lamar released his fifth album Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers in May, with guest appearances from Kodak Black, Summer Walker, Blxst, Ghostface Killah, Sampha, Amanda Reifer, Beth Gibbons of Portishead and fellow pgLang artists Baby Keem and Tanna Leone.