Kendrick Lamar Album ‘To Pimp a Butterfly’ Sets Spotify Record

Kendrick Lamar's latest album, To Pimp a Butterfly , which dropped nearly a week earlier than it was supposed to at around midnight Sunday, has already set a first day streaming record.

According to Spotify, tracks from the record have been streamed/listened to 9.6 million times on Monday, which is a new global first-day record for the online music service. The 9.6 million streams brought in about $44,160, based on Billboard's estimates. The previous record holder was Michael Buble's Christmas.

The streamlining numbers were most likely high due to the fact that iTunes did not release the album for download immediately. The album was not available on the Google Play store either.

The 16-track album, To Pimp a Butterfly, which was supposed to be released on March 23, has already gotten good reviews. Randall Roberts with the Los Angeles Times wrote, "A thematically linked record teeming with brass, strings, funk, hip hop, Vocoder nods to Parliament-Funkadelic, and a collection of ideas worthy of operatic adaptation, Lamar's third studio album is a realm away from his breakout 2012 album 'good kid, M.A.A.D City,' equally rich and way, way further gone."

Kanye West tweeted his opinion of Lamar's album. He wrote (in all caps), "Kendrick is an inspiration. Thank you for the vibrations and the spirit. Your meaning, message and execution are gifts to the world."

Jon Caramanica with the New York Times wrote, "It [mainstream hip-hop] has reframed its concerns as universal, not specific. It is, by and large, polite - a warm and welcoming host. Which is why Kendrick Lamar is the most ornery of modern rap stars. His concerns are personal, local, interior. He prefers narratives to anthems, verses to choruses, intricate feelings to intricate rhymes (though he has those, too).

Lamar has already won two Grammy Awards for the single "i," which is on the album.