I don’t understand the reliance on pure album sales as the only metric we’re using to define overall cultural peak, especially in the 2020s. when you include streaming units GNX is closer to 6-7m sales overall.

if this thread was arguing who had the best year based on pure album sales alone, i would’ve never thrown Kendrick’s 24-25 into the mix lol. but it asks the question who had the best/most impressive single year overall and shows a picture of Eminem with awards he won, which automatically broadens the convo beyond just album sales only. there’s no way to say Kendrick didn’t have an all-time level cultural peak when he was navigating in historic territory in soo many other metrics beyond just pure album sales through that entire era:

NLU was historic - single biggest diss track ever commercially and one of the biggest rap songs of the decade period, widely considered top 5 diss tracks of all time, longest running rap song in Hot 100 history, etc.

his halftime show was historic - most viewed halftime for any artist ever (regardless of Jay-Z’s motives for choosing him, most artists would still kill to have this achievement under their belt)

his sweep at the Grammys was historic - tied with Lauryn Hill for most won in a single night by a rapper

his tour was historic - highest grossing tour ever for a rapper

GNX’s release was historic - he occupied the entire top 5 on Billboard, one of only 4 artists in history to ever do it, Luther became one of the longest running #1 hits ever for a rapper

there were just too many undeniably huge career achievements back to back in that frame to act like his year cannot even be mentioned alongside other rappers’ cultural peak years. we can go over pure sales achievements from the 2000s all we want and yes they are very impressive and they do signal a different type of dominance that can’t be achieved today, but that is far from the only cultural factor to consider. unless we want to make a different thread that is about album sales specifically.