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DJ Hed recently criticized DJ Akademiks for comparing statistics from Kendrick Lamar and SZA's ongoing "Grand National Tour" to Drake's 2023-2024 tour, "It's All A Blur," which he co-headlined with 21 Savage (2023) and J. Cole (2024).
On June 26, 2025, DJ Akademiks took to social media to compare the two tours' statistics in terms of revenue, tickets sold, and number of shows, claiming Drake's arena tour outsold Lamar and SZA's stadium tour.
Following this, DJ Hed responded to Akademiks' tweet and accused him of "omitting" certain factors to "skew a narrative" in his favor. He noted that Lamar's "Grand National Tour" has finished only 23 shows so far (out of its 39 shows plus 2 solo Lamar shows), while Drake's "It's all a Blur" tour had 80 shows in total.
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Hed added that Lamar did "a fraction of the shows" and was still “coming close” to Drake's numbers, writing:
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"Hey, hope all is well. Appreciate your cultural “contributions” and all however for future reference, if you plan to skew a narrative in your favor, you’d probably want to omit certain things that are detrimental to your case. ie: Dot doing a fraction of the shows and still “coming close” to the margin you’ve set forth. Other than that hope everything else in your world is favorable and well wishes on any and all future endeavors."
For context, Akademiks' original tweet noted:
"Drake solo arena tour did $320m with 1.325m tickets sold. Kendrick and SZA stadium tour 256m with 1.1m tickets sold. Drake sold 200,000 more tickets and made 100 mil more."
DJ Akademiks had previously predicted that Kendrick Lamar's ongoing tour could outperform Drake's "It's All A Blur" tour during a Rumble livestream on May 2. He had hypothesized that Lamar and SZA's tour could potentially cross the $400 million mark and surpass Drake's tour, which grossed $320 million. He continued:
"I think Kendrick's gonna beat the record. He's gonna beat the record. However, Drake is still gonna have the record on technicality. Because Drake is gonna have the record for the shows within the United States and Canada. Kendrick is gonna hit overseas beyond Canada, after July 2, he's going to Germany, Scotland..."
Kendrick Lamar and SZA's ongoing tour broke records on opening day
On April 19, Kendrick Lamar and SZA embarked on their "Grand National Tour," kicking off with the first show in Minneapolis. Their opening concert broke the record for the highest-grossing concert by a rapper, surpassing Eminem's previous record of $8.7 million.
Kendrick Lamar and SZA's Minneapolis show grossed over $9.1 million, selling 47,354 tickets at an average price of $192.70 per ticket.
According to Our Generation Music, the duo broke their own record during their show at Lumen Field in Seattle on May 17, which reportedly grossed $14.811 million and sold 60,941 tickets. Their Seattle concert currently holds the record for the "highest-grossing hip-hop concert."
In other news, Kendrick Lamar and SZA closed the North American leg of their tour in Landover on June 18 and will begin the European leg on July 2 in Cologne, Germany. They are scheduled to wrap up the European leg with a final show in Stockholm on August 9, after which Lamar will perform two solo shows in Australia in December without SZA.
The solo tour dates align with Kendrick Lamar's scheduled performances at Australia's Spilt Milk Festival that same month, which will also feature Doechii and Dominic Fike as headliners, among others.
