As 2017 drew to close and the Billboard 200 chart was released to the public, a particular thing about it stuck out: Kendrick Lamar’s DAMN. was the highest-selling album of 2017. Lamar is regarded as one of the greatest rapper alive and even one of the greatest rappers of all time. His music is decidedly not tailored for radio success, though. Aside from anti-drinking anthem “Swimming Pools”, “Don’t Kill My Vibe”, and the aggressive “M.A.A.D. City”, not a lot of his songs from his debut major studio album Good Kid, M.A.A.D. City found much success out of the traditional hip-hop circle. It was mostly filled with stories from his hometown of Compton, with topics ranging from fear, peer pressure, selling drugs to support his family, and the pressures of being a black man in America. His subsequent album, 2015’s To Pimp A Butterfly, was a chaotic, painful, and forward-thinking album supported by complex jazz instrumentation. The scope of his subjects was widened, and he offered dense lyrics about black identity, societal inequality, and mental illness. The final track is a 12-minute opus capped by a fake interview with rap legend Tupac. Aside from the hits “Alright”, “King Kunta”, and “i”, not much of the album was designed to appeal to a wide audience.

As Complex magazine puts it, “In its entirety, To Pimp a Butterfly isn’t a conventionally enjoyable record; it is, essentially, the screams of an agonized man performing open-heart surgery on himself.” Good Kid and TPAB finished 24th and 16th on the year’s list of best-selling albums respectively.

When critics previously compared Kendrick Lamar and Drake, the best-selling modern hip-hop artist, they often came to the conclusion that while Lamar was leagues ahead of Drake in terms of rapping and story concepts, Drake had him beat in terms of songwriting and making music that appeals to a wide audience. With DAMN’s success, Lamar has solidified the fact that along with his prolific rapping skill, he can also metamorphosize into a hit-making pop artist when he wants to. In fact, for a single memorable week, Spotify’s top 10 US charts was all DAMN.

Collaborating with renowned trap producer Mike WiLL Made-it, Kendrick finally dabbled in making songs that fit within the modern trap genre of rap, arguably the most popular genre in music today. “HUMBLE”, a light, bouncy track smashed the charts from the introduction of its video to the release of the album. “DNA” was an aggressive torrent of rhymes about everything ranging from brunches to the Grammys to cultural appropriation to police brutality, but Mike-WiLL’s trap production and Kendrick’s fast flow propelled it to the top of the charts along with “HUMBLE”. “ELEMENT” called out copycat artists and Lamar’s doubters while talking about his paranoia as the best artist in the rap game, but Lamar hid such aggressive lyrics beneath another bouncy beat and catchy chorus. “LOYALTY” featuring Rihanna and “LOVE” featuring ZACARI were both straightforward, soft R&B-influenced tracks about, well, loyalty and love. That’s not to say the album doesn’t have its share of thoughtful tracks. “FEAR” is an 8-minute journey that features Kendrick talking about his fears and ideas at ages 7, 17, and 27 in three verses. “DUCKWORTH” is a harrowing tale of how a chance encounter at a Compton KFC shaped his entire rap career. With DAMN, Lamar essentially cut down on his trademark dense lyrics and metaphors and introduced more melodies and simpler flows to his formula and proved that he could be a formidable sales figure without losing his artistic integrity.