Kendrick Lamar has been crowned the No. 1 pop star of 2024 on Billboard‘s annual Greatest Pop Star by Year list.
The publication’s editorial staff selected their 10 Greatest Pop Stars of 2024, a list that includes Beyoncé at No. 8, Drake as an honorable mention and Shaboozey as Rookie of the Year.
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But Dot took the top spot, behind Sabrina Carpenter at No. 2 and Taylor Swift at No. 3.
“What made Kendrick Lamar’s 2024 so remarkable was that he didn’t just remind us of all the reasons why he was so big at his commercial and cultural peak – he showed that he could do things we’d never even seen from him before,” Billboard‘s Andrew Unterbeger wrote. “He showed that he was capable of hitting heights no other rapper had reached this decade, a period that had otherwise marked something of a downturn for the once seemingly indomitable genre’s mainstream prospects.
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“He showed that he was able to create cultural moments of both singular blunt-force impact and massive historical gravity – and then to do it again, and then again. And he showed that at his absolute best and biggest, he could dominate the streets, the charts and everywhere in between with equal sun-blocking vastness, and emerge as the winner not only when pitted against his most direct adversaries, but against any other potential peer in popular music.”
Meanwhile, Billboard had a different choice for their 2024 Billboard Music Awards earlier this month – awarding Drake with Top Rap Artist over his nemesis Kendrick Lamar.
However, honorees for those awards are selected by performance on the Billboard charts.
Drizzy won three awards, defeating Kendrick, Future, Metro Boomin and Travis Scott for Top Rap Artist (all but Scott had been involved in the series of back-and-forth records and other disses this past spring and summer); taking home the trophy for Top Rap Album, as For All the Dogs defeated projects from 21 Savage, Future and Metro, Nicki Minaj and Rod Wave; and also defeating Lamar and Scott for Top Rap Male Artist.
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Kendrick did not go home empty handed, though. His Drake diss “Not Like Us” won Top Rap Song honors.
