‘Billboard Unfiltered’: Kendrick Lamar’s ‘GNX’ & Drake’s Legal Filings Against Universal Music Group

It’s Kendrick Lamar Week for Billboard Unfiltered following the Thanksgiving break. Lamar unleashed his GNX album without any sort of warning on Nov. 22, and the LP debuted atop the Billboard 200 with 319,000 equivalent units earned.

Dot also took up a ton of real estate on this week’s Billboard Hot 100, with seven out of the top 10 and the entire top five. He even announced an accompanying 2025 North American stadium trek called the Grand National Tour, on which his “Luther” collaborator and former Top Dawg Entertainment running mate SZA will be joining him.

There was a clean sweep of approval from the quartet of co-hosts, with GNX launching Lamar into the album of the year conversation and stamping his banner year of rap domination.

Deputy Director of R&B/Hip-Hop Carl Lamarre believes K. Dot’s ’24 rivals some of the great years rap’s seen in the last 25 years. “Him being able to land three No. 1s this year on the Hot 100 … Him announcing this tour, him having a No. 1 album,” he said. “I think his run this year is probably comparable to what we’ve seen from an ’08 [Lil] Wayne, an ’03 50 [Cent], a 2018 Drake with what he’s been able to do.”

Editorial Director Damien Scott credited Lamar with “blanketing the culture” and compared GNX to Jay-Z’s The Blueprint with how direct and to the point the project is while releasing digestible hit records. “To me, this album feels like a Jay-Z album. It feels like The Blueprint. It’s very direct, it’s very to the point. Here’s Jay at the height of his powers being like, ‘I run this s–t. F–k all of you.’ Just like Kendrick is on the opening track,” Scott opined. “First it was f–k this one guy, now it’s f–k all of you … It’s an amazing rap record.”

The Debbie Deb-sampling “Squabble Up” launched at No. 1 on the Hot 100, and Senior Charts Analyst Trevor Anderson didn’t expect to hear a hit record like that. “Coming off ‘Squabble Up,’ I was up there looking like Jonathan Majors in my apartment doing the little civil rights dance,” he joked. “One thing we missed with Mr. Morale was a clean Kendrick hit.”

Elsewhere during Billboard Unfiltered, the staff discussed Drake making a pair of legal filings against Universal Music Group in November, alleging that his record label artificially inflated the popularity of Lamar’s “Not Like Us.”

Staff Writer Kyle Denis was confused initially by the 6 God’s legal actions, but believes the first pre-filing has a chance to be a landmark case if it indeed heads to trial and there’s a ruling in Drake’s favor that shakes up streaming’s landscape. “If this does end up going to trial and we get a decision that actually impacts the very model of streaming, this would be an important case,” he stated. “All of that is still colored by the timing of it all, and this arriving during GNX week. It’s a little bit pathetic … It just feels a little bit ‘Let me do what I can to muddy up this guy’s release week any way that I can.’”

Watch the full episode above.