Kendrick Lamar may be the most critically acclaimed rapper in the world right now, but he is far from being the top earner. Lamar banked an estimated $12 million pretax this year—a $3 million increase from the $9 million haul he has recorded annually since his 2013 debut on the Hip-Hop Cash Kings list, but far below the top tier of entertainment earners.
In 2015, Lamar’s payday is $9 million less than Nicki Minaj’s $21 million haul and just under a third Drake’s $39.5 million payday. It pales in comparison to the mogul money of top-ranked Diddy ($60 million) and second placed Jay Z ($56 million).
So what accounts for the Compton rapper’s smaller payday? Lamar has over 26 tour dates—several of them festival headlining slots—to thank for most of his cash during our scoring period, but a hesitation to endorse products or diversify means his paycheck remains measured.
“All money ain’t good money,” Lamar, now 28, told FORBES in 2013. Back then, Lamar insisted he was concentrating on making music over building businesses, and he seems to have stayed true to his word.
Full list: Hip-Hop Cash Kings 2015
His new music is certainly making him money, albeit at a more modest rate than 2012’s Good Kid, M.A.A.D City, which has sold over 1.4 million copies. To Pimp a Butterfly, Lamar’s hotly-anticipated follow up was a dense, jazz-inflected record that denied fans singalong hits like “Swimming Pools (Drank)” and left critics tripping over themselves to decipher its spoken word interludes.
“Thanks to D'Angelo's Black Messiah and Kendrick Lamar's To Pimp a Butterfly, 2015 will be remembered as the year radical Black politics and for-real Black music resurged in tandem to converge on the nation's pop mainstream,” wrote Rolling Stone, in one of many glowing reviews the record received.
Despite a bungled release, which saw the album appear online a week earlier than slated, To Pimp a Butterfly still sold 324,000 copies in its first week. It has yet to reach platinum status, but its artistic merit earned Lamar a credibility that trumps dollars. Dr. Dre’s prodigy tackled race, poverty and survivor’s guilt over beats by California’s best producers, reinvigorating West Coast rap in the process.
His only major brand partnership this year even managed to be political. Lamar released a pair of Reeboks, one detailed in red and one in blue, which unite the colors of Compton’s troubled Bloods and Crips gangs in a sporty symbol of peace.
You won’t find Drake or Nicki using their endorsements to tackle social issues. Drake has multi-million dollar deals with commercial giants
Unlike many members of the Cash Kings list, Lamar has avoided endorsing a liquor—or starting his own. He is more likely to be in the studio than being paid for nightclub appearances, and you won’t find his social media feeds clogged with promotional tweets.
To be clear, his $30 million-plus career earnings to date are nothing to sniff at. But credible Kendrick remains, first and foremost, a musician—and for fans and critics alike, that’s a good thing.
“I rap because I know I serve a better purpose as far as making people feel good about themselves,” Lamar once told FORBES. Let’s hope he never stops.
