This podcast episode is part of the Billboard editorial staff’s Greatest Pop Stars of 2025 list. Find our accompanying Kendrick Lamar essay here, and all the rest of our essays and podcasts related to the list here.
At the end of one of the best years for pop music and pop stardom in recent memory, Kendrick Lamar stood alone for us as the No. 1 Greatest Pop Star of 2024. His run for the ages in that year included three No. 1 hits on the Billboard Hot 100, a Billboard 200-topping surprise-release album, the most world-stopping concert event of the year and a decisive victory in the biggest rap beef of his generation. But if anyone — particularly a certain Canadian someone — was hoping he was going to ease up in 2025, they were quickly disappointed, as Lamar kept pushing on with achievement after achievement, matching his 2024 dominance for much of the year, and even looking for a minute like he might end up our No. 1 for the second straight year.
This Greatest Pop Stars of 2025 episode of the Greatest Pop Stars podcast looks at how Kendrick Lamar ended up at No. 4 on our list — thanks to a year where he just couldn’t seem to stop winning, from the Grammys to the Super Bowl to the charts to just about everywhere in between (You can find Angel Diaz’s essay on Lamar’s stunning sequel year here.) Today, Billboard Hip-Hop‘s Carl Lamarre joins host Andrew Unterberger to relive the flashbulb moments from the rapper’s second straight all-world campaign, whose greatness Carl can’t help but acknowledge, even as it continued to come at the expense of his own No. 1 guy.
Along the way, we ask all the most pressing questions about Kendrick Lamar’s 2025: Was he intentionally dragging it on the way to the Grammys stage to get the “A-Minor” timing just right? Was Drake watching the Super Bowl halftime show live from somewhere in Australia? Does “Luther” make sense to us yet as a 10-plus-week No. 1 on the Hot 100? How does the Grand National tour compare to Jay-Z and Beyoncé’s On the Run trek? Why didn’t Playboi Carti’s “Good Credit” and the Clipse’s “Chains & Whips” end up bigger hits with those K Dot guest verses on them? And perhaps most importantly: Was there a world in which Kendrick Lamar ended up the first artist to ever top our Greatest Pop Stars list two years in a row?
Check it out above, along with a YouTube playlist of some of the greatest moments of Sabrina Carpenter’s 2025 — all of which are discussed on the pod — and subscribe to the Greatest Pop Stars podcast on Apple Music or Spotify (or wherever you get your podcasts) for complete podcast coverage of this year’s Greatest Pop Stars of 2025 list!
And as we say in every one of these GPS podcast posts — if you have the time and money to spare, please consider donating to any of these causes in the fight for trans rights:
Gender-Affirming Care Fundraising on GoFundMe
Also, please consider giving your local congresspeople a call in support of trans rights, with contact information you can find on 5Calls.org.