Kendrick Lamar surpassed Drake’s record for the highest-grossing tour by a rapper.
During the pandemic, tours were nonexistent, and many of us wondered if things would ever go back to normal and what that new normal would look like. The recovery has seen an uptick since last year when Tyler, The Creator’s Call Me If You Get Lost tour brought in $32 million. This was the most we’d seen since the pandemic happened, as the two-month tour sold 389,000 tickets across 32 cities.
The early post-pandemic trend was promising, but a record-breaking tour is a pleasant surprise. Kendrick Lamar grossed north of 100 million on his last tour. According to Tours Data, Kendrick Lamar’s The Big Steppers tour is now the highest-grossing tour by a rapper as the headlining act in all of history. Kendrick dethroned his rival Drake with his 73-show tour, which brought in a whopping $110.9 million from 929,000 tickets sold.
Drake’s 2018 Aubrey and the Three Migos tour, which is now second highest earning, brought in $79 million from 678,410 tickets sold for 43 shows.
The Big Steppers tour, which ended in September, also outsold Kendrick’s own DAMN. tour, which grossed $77 million in 2018 with 833,372 tickets sold across 62 shows. The 8-figure gross also puts the album ahead of Travis Scott’s Astroworld tour, Kanye West and Jay Z’s Watch The Throne tour, and Drake and Future’s Summer Sixteen tour.
Kendrick Lamar’s record-setting tour followed the release of his equally record-breaking Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers album, which racked up over 60 million streams on Apple Music on the first day, the most for 2022. The Grammy-award-winning album debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart, with 295,000 equivalent album units moved.
For the tour, Kendrick was the creative director along with Mike Carson and his business partner and longtime manager, Dave Free. A subset of the pgLang outfit – Tanna Leone, who is on the album track “Mr. Morale” with Kendrick and Baby Keem, supported the rapper for the multi-continental voyage.
It’s safe to say rap music has reached new heights with this one because K. Dot is doing pop numbers here. The Big Steppers Tour literally grossed more than $100 million, with Kendrick being the headline act.
What does this mean for the future of rap music and touring projections? More of this for hip-hop and rap music please.
.@kendricklamar's "The Big Steppers" is the highest-grossing tour by a rapper as headlining act in history with $110.9 million from 929,000 tickets sold in 73 shows.
— Touring Data (@touringdata) April 26, 2023
Top Tours by Rappers:
#1 #KendrickLamar, "The Big Steppers"
#2 #Drake, "Aubrey & the Three Migos"
#3 #Drake & #Future, "Summer Sixteen"
#4 #KanyeWest & #JayZ, "Watch the Throne"
#5 #KendrickLamar, "Damn"
#6 #TravisScott, "Astroworld"— Touring Data (@touringdata) April 26, 2023
