It’s official, Drake’s most recent drop Certified Lover Boy is the top-debuting album of the year so far, beating out the Canadian artist’s biggest rival Kanye West’s most recent (and endlessly delayed) release Donda.
Certified Lover Boy sold 595,300 album-equivalent units upon its release, compared to the 313,000 album units Donda sold at the time of its entry.
Even more remarkably, Drake also managed to land 10 songs from the record on the Rolling Stone songs chart, whereas Kanye occupied just five of the 10 the week before.
If we dissect the numbers, Certified Lover Boy sold 43,200 full copies of the album, but the impressive 595,300 number mostly came from a huge 680.9 million individual streams for the record’s songs.
‘Way 2 Sexy’ took out the top spot of the top 10 with 57.8 million streams, followed by ‘Girls Want Girls,’ ‘Fair Trade,’ ‘Champagne Poetry,’ ‘Knife Talk,’ ‘In the Bible,’ ‘TSU, ‘Papi’s Home’, ‘No Friends in the Industry’ and ‘Love All’.
By comparison, Donda debuted with 313,000 album-equivalent units made up of 37,000 full album sales and 341 million individual streams.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, West’s track ‘Hurricane’ which references his split from ex-wife Kim Kardashian, grabbed the most attention and racked up 27.6 million streams in its first five days of release.
Certified Lover Boy is the sixth studio album by the Canadian rapper and features guest spots from Lil Baby, Lil Durk, Giveon, Jay-Z, Travis Scott, Future, Young Thug, Yebba, 21 Savage, Project Pat, Tems, Ty Dolla Sign, Lil Wayne, Rick Ross, and Kid Cudi. The record debuted at number one on the US Billboard 200 chart and also broke Apple Music and Spotify records for largest streaming debut within a single day.
Donda is West’s tenth studio album and was originally intended for a July 24, 2020, release but was delayed multiple times before finally dropping on August 29, 2021. The album features appearances from Playboi Carti, Fivio Foreign, Lil Durk, Ty Dolla Sign, Young Thug, Kid Cudi, Lil Yachty, Jay-Z, Lil Baby and the Weeknd along with controversial guests Da Baby, Marilyn Manson and Chris Brown.
Read more stories from The Latch and subscribe to our email newsletter.