Akademiks was quick to offer an explanation after Kendrick Lamar landed at No. 2 on his Spotify Wrapped for 2024.
As reported earlier on Wednesday, Taylor Swift was once again the most-streamed artist globally, while Kendrick didn’t make the top 10. The GNX artist and soon-to-be Super Bowl Halftime Show headliner, however, did come in at No. 7 on Spotify’s rundown of the top 10 artists in the U.S. His Drake-dissing “Not Like Us” closes out a year of ubiquity at No. 2 on the platform’s top 10 songs in the U.S. list.
For Ak, whose affinity for the 6 god is well-documented, his No. 1 artist on Spotify for the year (Drake) was no surprise. Rounding out Ak’s top five were Kendrick, YoungBoy Never Broke Again, Lil Durk, and Future. Elaborating on his 2024 listening habits in a series of tweets, Ak pointed to Kendrick and Drake’s historic back-and-forth as having boosted “both artists” when it comes to streaming numbers.
“Normally Kendrick Lamar wouldn't sniff my Spotify Wrapped, but he's No. 2 on mine,” Ak wrote on Wednesday. “The explanation for that is that’s what happens when u beef with everyone’s favorite rapper. We gotta listen to ur shit too cuz of the beef. Beefing when it’s just musical competition helps both artists.”
Ak continued in a follow-up tweet, arguing that this was all “proof that beefing with a bigger artist is the ultimate stimulus package u can get.”
The Spotify Wrapped explanation comes after Ak took a critical stance on the media landscape at large in connection with how Drake has opted to navigate it in recent years. Ak believes he stands alone, at least in terms of matters of Drake, going os far as to state that the For All the Dogs artist doesn’t “fuck with nobody else in media.”
At the time, the news cycle had zeroed in on a pair of legal filings from Drake centered on the success of “Not Like Us.” Drake has alleged that the numbers behind the track were falsely inflated; furthermore, he claims the song’s release amounts to defamation due to certain lyrics, though Kendrick himself is not directly accused in the filings in question. Instead, Drake’s focus is largely on Universal Music Group.
