We’re Living Through the Most Dominant Chart Run Since the Height of Taylor Swift’s “Eras” Tour

We know how pop-star feuds catch fire—a nasty breakup, an onstage embarrassment, some sibling rivalry, or … um, that thing where someone steals your backup dancers. But how does a beef end?
As a practical matter, if the feud doesn’t wind up in a courtroom, it can often end anticlimactically, in some publicist’s or manager’s office. But as a cultural matter, when the feud involves chart-topping musicians, the charts eventually deliver a verdict. In the early ’70s, after the Beatles split, nothing got John Lennon to eventually stop slinging haterade at Paul McCartney in his interviews and song lyrics except the humbling realization that Paul’s solo songs were charting better than John’s. (By the mid-’70s, they buried the hatchet.) Something similar happened in the mid-’10s after Taylor Swift picked a fight with Katy Perry, then proceeded to usurp her pop queendom. (They, too, eventually made up.) In its way, this dawning Billboard-based realization—generated by the day-to-day choices of ordinary music listeners—is quiet but decisive.
Just such a verdict is being rendered, quietly but decisively, on the charts right now in the ongoing matter of Drake versus Kendrick Lamar, a bruising feud that launched nearly a year ago and shows few signs of dissipating. (Not since Taylor Swift versus Kanye West has a vendetta between a pair of music stars dragged on so long, with such a long tail of chart consequences.) In the media, this beef is still sizzling, loudly. As you may have heard, earlier this year Drake filed a dubious lawsuit seeking damages from Universal Music—the recording conglomerate for which both he and Lamar record—for releasing and promoting Kendrick’s now-legendary, chart-topping, pedophilia-alleging, Grammy-winning, Super Bowl–igniting diss record “Not Like Us.” Right through this week, there are new headlines: Universal responded to the lawsuit, undermining its legal basis and basically dunking on Drake by calling his suit “an attempt to save face.” (The pièce de résistance: Universal’s lawyers found a 2022 petition Drake signed decrying the use of rap lyrics in courtroom prosecutions and declaring hip-hop bars are artistic expression, not to be taken literally. Nice touch.)
Every turn in the K-dot versus Drizzy saga has been like this: loud, flashy and popcorn-worthy. When “Not Like Us” dropped about 10 months ago—the umpteenth turn in a series of withering singles—folks declared Lamar the winner of the beef by general acclaim. Drake’s lawsuit, however futile it may turn out to be, has been equally headline-grabbing.
But the real sign Kendrick has triumphed has been mellowing out atop the Hot 100 the past four weeks, a gentle duet between Lamar and R&B singer SZA, built on a sample of a beloved soul vocalist who died nearly two decades ago. It’s a very pleasant, chilled-out track that has the kind of omnipresence a Drake ballad would have had a few years ago. If you’ll allow me to mangle T.S. Eliot, this is the way the feud ends: not with a banger, but with a weeper.
The song is called “Luther,” and it’s named after Luther Vandross, the florid vocal legend who reigned on the R&B charts in the 1980s and ’90s before his untimely passing in 2005. Taken from Lamar’s late-2024 album GNX, “Luther” embeds three layers of classic male-female balladry into one hit: Already a duet between our reigning top rapper and top hip-hop–soul singer, the track is built around a generous sample of “If This World Were Mine,” a cherished 1982 R&B hit by Vandross and Cheryl Lynn, that is itself a cover of a 1967 Motown deep cut by Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell. Neither the Gaye–Terrell original nor the Vandross–Lynn remake was a big pop hit—on the Hot 100, the former topped out at No. 68 in 1968, and the latter “bubbled under” at No. 101 in 1982. But on the R&B chart, Gaye–Terrell’s “Mine” reached No. 27 and Vandross–Lynn’s “Mine” reached No. 4—the latter essentially an ’80s Black-radio staple. In other words, by picking this song to sample, focusing on Vandross’ version, and invoking him in the song’s title (a gambit first pulled by Jay Z and Kanye West on their 2011 single “Otis,” which prominently sampled Otis Redding), Lamar and SZA sent a signal to the Black community that this track was one for them.
And yet “Luther” has become one for everybody. It’s now Kendrick Lamar’s longest-running Hot 100 chart-topper, with four straight weeks at No. 1. And it’s not just being consumed by Lamar’s most loyal rap fans. In addition to being the most-streamed song in America for the past month, according to Billboard, it’s now the second-most-played song on radio. Even if you limit the data to Top 40 pop stations, “Luther” currently ranks a remarkable eighth, just below the latest hits by Chappell Roan and Billie Eilish. It’s Lamar’s first hit as the lead artist to make the top 10 on pop radio; previously, he only did that well on pop stations in a supporting role on tracks by pop megastars Maroon 5, Taylor Swift, and the Weeknd.
Back on the Hot 100, the track’s four-week run at No. 1 is also remarkable, because that beats all of Lamar’s previous chart-toppers: Taylor Swift’s Kendrick-supported “Bad Blood” (one week, 2015), his own “Humble” (one week, 2017) and “Squabble Up” (one week, 2024), the Drake-beef-inflaming Future–Metro Boomin collaboration “Like That” (three weeks, 2024), and—this is the surprise—“Not Like Us.” The smash Drake diss amassed three weeks total on top, in a very unusual chart pattern. It commanded the Hot 100 for one week last May, when it first dropped at the height of the Drake beef; a second week in July, fueled by the release of its acclaimed music video; and a third week in mid-February, right after Kendrick’s meme-worthy Super Bowl halftime performance. That’s the thing about Lamar’s victorious diss—notoriety is its gasoline. The song is known the world over, but more as a source of LOLz, as a dance challenge, and as a jokey singalong (“A-minorrrrrrrr”) than a song to be enjoyed passively.
“Luther,” by contrast, is Kendrick Lamar’s first chart-commanding pop hit that’s more about vibes than bars. It’s the kind of song that works best if you let it waft in the background. Riding a bass-heavy thump over orchestral strings, “Luther” finds Lamar singing more than he raps—he is an adequate, not virtuosic singer—with dreamy, devotional lyrics that in spots feel like first drafts. The opening verse climaxes with: “If this world was mine, I’d take your enemies in front of God/ Introduce ’em to that light, hit them strictly with that fire/ Fah-fah, fah-fah-fah, fah-fah, fah.” Not since the Christmas carol “Deck the Halls” has “fah” borne so much weight.
The song’s best melodic hooks are carried by Ms. Solána Imani Rowe. This is not the first time SZA and Lamar have collaborated—she was his vocal partner on the hit Black Panther soundtrack anthem “All the Stars” (No. 7, 2018)—but she has only become a bigger deal since then. Especially after her 2022 sophomore LP SOS became a record-breaking chart juggernaut, SZA has emerged as zillennials’ undisputed Queen of R&B. On “Luther,” SZA’s verses are a showcase for her signature trill—you know it’s her when she quavers on the “oh” sounds in the pre-chorus: “In this world, concrete flowers growww/ Heartache, she only doin’ what she knowww/ Weekends, get it poppin’ on the lo And on the main refrain, Lamar provides mellow counterpoint vocals but mostly hangs back and lets SZA carry the melody: “If it was up to me/ I wouldn’t give these nobodies no sympathy/ I’d take away the pain, I’d give you everything.” Three decades after Method Man and Mary J. Blige’s smash, street-bumping 1995 duet remake of “You’re All I Need to Get By” (itself a Marvin Gaye–Tammi Terrell cover), “Luther” is—though both Lamar and SZA are millennials—what a hip-hop ballad duet sounds like in the Gen Z era: more moody, impressionistic … a pillowy sigh.
Basically, both commercially and artistically, “Luther” in 2025 is for Lamar—I hope he won’t be insulted when I say this—what 2018’s “In My Feelings” was for Drake. In both cases, the track started out as a deep cut before emerging as a fan favorite. As I chronicled seven years ago in this Slate No. 1 hits series, when Drake dropped his 2018 album Scorpion, “Feelings” was not a promotional focus; it debuted within the Top 10 among a bunch of other album cuts. But after a social media–fueled dance challenge, the moody, midtempo, romantically wistful “Feelings” rose to No. 1 and wound up one of Scorpion’s biggest hits, a 10-week Hot 100 commander and the year’s Song of the Summer. Similarly, when Lamar surprise-dropped his GNX album in November, “Luther” was not tapped as a single (that status went to the more up-tempo No. 1 hit “Squabble Up”). It wasn’t even necessarily a standout, although when tracks from the new Kendrick album swept the Hot 100’s Top Five in early December—a remarkable chart achievement that only the Beatles, Swift, and Drake had ever pulled off before—“Luther” debuted at a robust No. 3, likely fueled by SZA’s prominent featured role. After the holiday season, when Lamar’s roster of tracks enjoyed another round of attention fueled by the Grammys and the Super Bowl, “Not Like Us” made its latest comeback, but “Luther” was right behind it. Social media helped—“Luther” is fairly popular on TikTok, although “Not Like Us” has been even more viral on the social-video site—but more importantly, Lamar and SZA performed the song live as part of Kendrick’s Super Bowl halftime medley. That much-dissected extravaganza wound up being the most-watched Super Bowl halftime in history, which certainly didn’t hurt.
Still, the halftime show could have just provided a boost to the ever-present “Not Like Us.” The rise of “Luther” to No. 1, several weeks after the Super Bowl, was less predictable. The song seems to be the biggest beneficiary of Kendrick’s current cultural dominance—a vibey bop audiences have organically gravitated toward in their mood-based Spotify playlists and radio requests. Moreover, Lamar and SZA still haven’t produced an official “Luther” music video, which means the song could conceivably get another chart boost in the weeks to come, should a glossy visual ever arrive.
Still, maybe the most remarkable Kendrick chart stat of 2025—the one that best exemplifies the rarefied air he’s now breathing—is that he has had three of the Top Five songs on the Hot 100 for more than a month. Ever since mid-February’s double whammy of the Grammys (where “Not Like Us” was the surprise winner of both Record and Song of the Year) and the Super Bowl, Lamar’s hits “Luther,” “Not Like Us,” and “TV Off” have each occupied a spot in the Top Five, crowding out everything but the former No. 1s “Die with a Smile” by Bruno Mars and Lady Gaga and the deathless “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” by Shaboozey. (For two of Kendrick’s post–Super Bowl weeks, he held down an incredible four of the Top Five—the above three singles plus a resurgent “Squabble Up.”) These songs are all receiving some measure of streams, download sales, and even radio airplay. R&B/hip-hop stations in particular have practically become all-Kendrick radio, as “Luther” and “TV Off” are both among the format’s three most-played songs. And “Squabble Up” and “Not Like Us” are still receiving pop-radio airplay months after they peaked. We haven’t seen an artist this dominant with this many hits since Taylor Swift’s “Eras” tour peak.
Or, to make a more apt comparison, since Drake: Lamar has not only defeated him in their rap beef, he has now, commercially, become Drake, our default imperial rapper. Many times over the past decade or so, Drake has monopolized multiple positions in the Top 10: most especially in his peak year of 2018, when “God’s Plan,” “Nice for What,” and “In My Feelings” all rode the chart’s upper reaches for months, but also even more recently than that. (Here’s a week in 2021 where he owned nine of the Top 10, for example.) This omnipresence has now transferred to Lamar. Moreover, this has remained true even as Drake has tried to steal back his spotlight: In February, Drake dropped a new album, a team-up with Canadian singer PartyNextDoor, and while it had a decent first week, a month later, none of its hits are charting as well as any of these older Lamar tracks.
The afterglow of Kendrick’s culture-commanding winter should have faded by now, but it looks like he will remain ubiquitous into the spring. And again, this is nearly a full year after the start of the whole Drake beef, which has fundamentally altered our perception of Lamar. America didn’t just root for him in the competition with Drizzy. It turned him into our pop mascot. That’s new for Kendrick—even during the peak of his critical acclaim in the mid-’10s, with To Pimp a Butterfly and the Pulitzer-winning Damn, Lamar didn’t read as an all-purpose pop star. Even last year, when “Not Like Us” first arrived, Kendrick was still the rapper’s , with “Luther,” he’s the crooning rapper we turn up on the car radio during our commute.
In other words, Kendrick Lamar is rewriting the rules for imperial phases as we speak. I recently studied that subject on an episode of my Slate chart-history podcast Hit Parade, in which I defined what an artist’s imperial phase means and went deep on Madonna’s now-legendary one in the ’80s. In a bonus conversation for Slate Plus, I interviewed pop critic DJ Louie XIV, host of his own podcast Pop Pantheon, and he made an interesting and mostly correct observation: Imperial phases are normally enjoyed only by the young. “Pop music is one of the most fickle, ever-changing things,” Louie said. “I mean, have we seen a pop star have an imperial phase past the age of, I don’t know, 32?!” I agreed, but in a subsequent chat, Louie and I realized one major counterexample we could have cited: Kendrick Lamar, right now, at age 37. Lamar fans may not rank “Luther” very highly in his pantheon of songs, and, much the way few Madonna fans recall that her longest-running No. 1 hit was the mid-’90s ballad “Take a Bow” (more weeks on top than “Like a Virgin” or “Like a Prayer”!), I suspect years from now only the most dedicated Lamar fans will remember that “Luther” was his longest-running No. 1. But no matter what, it will remain a monument to this quirky moment when Kendrick was as effortlessly commanding as any Main Pop Girl, when it wasn’t a question if this world was his.