HOT DAMN., KENDRICK LAMAR IS BACK (UPDATE)

Kendrick Lamar's latest album, DAMN., dropped right on schedule Thursday night/Friday morning, and immediately sailed to #1 on iTunes. The set is off to a stronger start than its predecessor, 2015’s To Pimp a Butterfly, registering a 13% higher number in iTunes’ overnight sales and preorder redemptions. Will it meet or beat Butterfly’s first week sales of 324k? Will Lamar become the first artist other than Drake to crack 200 million streams for a single album in one week? If so, how high will it go?

"HUMBLE." debuted last week on our Streaming Songs Chart with nearly 33 million streams. It remains on top this week with an additional 26 million. Watch this space tomorrow morning for our first week projections. The track is #3 overall at the time of this posting, and also #1 on Spotify's U.S. Top 50 and Top 5 on the Global equivalent. K Dot rules Apple Music's top tracks as well, with "HUMBLE." up top, and DAMN tracks commanding six of the Top 10 spots and 12 of the Top 20.

DAMN. (TDE/Aftermath/Interscope) is Kendrick's fourth studio album, and at 14 songs, comes embedded with massive superstar features from Rihanna and U2.

But it's Kendrick's lyricism and patented sonic imagery that everyone will be focused on, and the album promises unflinching reality from the start, a chorus opening with "Is it wickedness, is it weakness, you decide," as Kendrick begins, "So I was taking a walk the other day..."—and the track abruptly ends with the sound of gunshots.

Kendrick has described the new project as "urgent," with production handled by Mike Will Made-It, Alchemist, DJ Dahi, BADBADNOTGOOD, 9th Wonder and more.