For this year’s update of our ongoing Greatest Pop Star by Year project, Billboard will be counting down our editorial staff picks for the 10 Greatest Pop Stars of 2025 all the next two weeks. Last week, we revealed our Honorable Mentions artists for 2025 as well as our Rookie of the Year and Comeback of the Year artists. Now, we reach No. 4 on our list with an artist who kept an all-time run in pop or hip-hop history going for another year — half a year, at least — with similarly dazzling results: Kendrick Lamar.
Listen to our Greatest Pop Stars podcast discussion about Kendrick Lamar’s year continuing to pile it on here, and find the rest of our updating top 10 list with all our corresponding essays and pods here.
How do you follow up one of the best years of any artist in hip-hop history? You just let off the first shot in the most significant rap battle since The Battle of New York City in 2001 when Jay-Z got on that Summer Jam stage, stood in front of that crowd, and said, “Ask Nas, he don’t want it with Hov.” You then meticulously picked your opponent apart with clever and maniacal diss records effectively mimicking what Drake did to Meek Mill when he answered “Charged Up” with a hit record in “Back to Back” back in 2015. The knockout punch then goes viral, hits No. 1 on the only chart that matters, and gets nominated for multiple Grammys.
And while rumors of an album swirl, as fans and the industry alike assume you’d capitalize some way from all the attention the battle has garnered, you get tapped to headline the Super Bowl Halftime show. Finally, you do drop that sixth studio album, which debuts at No. 1 and takes over the entire top five of the Billboard Hot 100, and announce a stadium tour that would touch 18 countries the following year. That’s how Kendrick Lamar answered his critics after wrestling the crown away from his peers Drake and J. Cole, effectively turning the trio once affectionately known as “The Big 3” into officially just “Big Me.”
Lamar’s 2024 — which ended with him being named our staff’s No. 1 Greatest Pop Star of that year — effectively set up 2025 to be his victory lap. He started the year off with GNX still in the Billboard 200 top five and had an absolutely absurd February. He then took home five Grammys while having an audience of his peers scream “A-minor” in unison, needing extra arms to carry the best music video, best rap song, best rap performance, song of the year and record of the year trophies — all for “Not Like Us” — back to Compton. He then turned around and delivered the most watched Super Bowl Halftime Show to date, in which he ran up the score on Drake worse than the Eagles torching the Chiefs, by performing a song at the center of a preposterous and frivolous lawsuit — getting a sold-out stadium filled with people from all walks of life rapping along at the top of their lungs, while Drake’s ex tennis superstar Serena Williams Crip Walked on his proverbial grave.
The response from his historical performance was so massive that both “Not Like Us” and “Luther,” his GNX duet with SZA, shot back up the charts — and his catalog saw the biggest post-Super Bowl chart gains we’ve ever seen, putting four of his songs back in the top five and 13 overall in the Hot 100. When it was all said and done, “Luther” not only topped the chart for the first time in March, it dominated for 13 consecutive weeks, longer than any other 2025 hit.
Lamar also made appearances on two of the year’s best rap projects in the Clipse’s reunion album Let God Sort Em Out on the track “Chains & Whips,” as well as on Playboi Carti’s highly anticipated I Am Music on the songs “Good Credit,” “Backdoor” and “Mojo Jojo,” which added another layer to those already eventful albums — sort of like seeing Jigga feature during the late ‘90s and early ‘2000s’00s. Then there was the Grand National Tour he embarked on alongside former TDE teammate SZA — with whom he enjoyed yet another Hot 100 top 10 hit earlier that year, with the Lana bonus cut “30 for 30” — which ended the year as the highest grossing hip-hop tour of 2025, and served as the culmination of an 18-month run that will be referenced by for years to come.
He then capped things off with nine Grammy nominations at February’s upcoming ceremonies, including record of the year, song of the year, rap song of the year, rap album of the year and album of the year. His guest appearances on SZA’s and the Clipse’s respective records were also nominated, rounding out yet another year leading music’s biggest night. Now that’s how you stay top of mind — particularly as Drake keeps trying to make that preposterous and frivolous lawsuit mentioned earlier happen, further confusing his own comeback efforts and preventing him from being able to take the throne back.
For the foreseeable future, rap’s crown now resides in the West, where Kendrick’s focus this year will be presumably on his cousin and pgLang labelmate Baby Keem. Fans aren’t really expecting new music from the Compton rapper in 2026, but that could change — especially depending on whether Drake says anything on his upcoming Iceman set that makes the boogeyman come back outside, or if J. Cole somehow decides to get back in the ring with The Fall-Off when it drops in February.
Kendrick has undoubtedly entered a new stratosphere within the pop culture zeitgeist, thanks to the cultural impact of “Not Like Us” and besting Drake in the most pivotal rap battle in more than 20 years. He’s officially a household name now. Your mom might’ve known who he was or heard his name before, but now your grandmother knows who he is or at the very least knows that he’s the guy with the song they kept hearing everywhere. Now we wait for the acting pivot (he once played a drug addict in Power) or maybe the running for office pivot, or even him hosting Saturday Night Live.
The question we have now is: Will he take a hiatus between music projects like he’s been known to do in the past, or will he continue to stay outside and remind us of who he is as the game’s best and who he wants to be when it comes to being a record executive? He doesn’t have to go on a stream to gamble or post consistently on social media like a certain somebody — but he can’t go back in hiding and expect to maintain cultural relevance, let alone cultural dominance, even if everyone in the world knows who Kendrick Lamar is now.
Listen to our Kendrick Lamar Greatest Pop Stars of 2025 podcast discussion here, check back for our No. 3 artist on Wednesday, and stay tuned all next week as we roll out the top five of our list — leading to the announcement of our No. 1 Greatest Pop Star of 2025 on Friday, Jan. 30!
