Kendrick Lamar is already earning critical acclaim for his Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers studio LP. But how will the West Coaster’s most recent album do commercially?
HitsDailyDouble crunched the early calculations to determine first-week projections for Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers. Kendrick Lamar should easily top next week’s Billboard 200 chart according to the website.
Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers is on pace to open with 325,000-350,000 units. If those numbers hold up, Kendrick Lamar will score the largest first-week sales of 2022.
Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers Should Surpass Un Verano Sin Ti
Bad Bunny’s Un Verano Sin Ti just set the sales benchmark for the year. The 274,000 equivalent album units for the Puerto Rican performer’s album surpassed Future’s 222,000 first-week haul for I Never Liked You.
While Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers is almost certain to become Kendrick Lamar’s fourth #1 album, the initial sales for the project are below 2017’s Damn. That Pulitzer Prize-winning collection debuted at #1 on the Billboard 200 with 603,000 units.
However, unlike Lamar’s previous projects, Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers is currently a digital-only release. While physical copies of the album are unavailable, listeners have run up the streaming numbers for the set.
Apple Music & Spotify Users Continue To Stream Lamar’s Latest Album
Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers broke the record for the highest first-day streams for a 2022 album on Apple Music worldwide. It also collected more than 90 million Spotify streams in the first 24 hours.
Tracks off the album continue to dominate both Apple Music and Spotify’s daily streaming charts in the United States. HDD expects Mr. Morale to accumulate around 400 million U.S. streams in its first week on DSPs.
In addition, the official music video for “N95” is presently trending at #2 in YouTube’s music section. The Dave Free/Kendrick Lamar-directed visuals amassed over 7 million views on the platform. Lamar’s pre-album loosie track “The Heart Part 5” is the #1 trending music video at the moment with 26 million total views.