It's Drake Week on the Billboard charts, as the rapper sets records for sheer quantity — including three albums debuting in the top three, led by ICEMAN at No. 1. On the Hot 100 singles chart, Drake posts 40 debut songs (an all-time record) among the 42 entries total that bear his name (ditto). And he extends all-time records for most-ever songs to crack the top 10, top 40 and Hot 100.
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Let's get a great big caveat out of the way upfront: When we talk about "all-time Billboard chart records," we are not — not — talking about "the biggest songs/albums/artists of all time." Drake has either set or extended a good many records this week, but most of them are based on a commercial music landscape that's only existed for a little more than a decade. And, in that decade, you won't find many artists who've released more songs or albums in a single day than Drake did on May 15.
Let's start with the albums. Drake has been teasing a new record called ICEMAN for ages now, but when it finally dropped, his new baby turned out to be triplets: three albums, titled ICEMAN, HABIBTI and MAID OF HONOUR. This week, they debut at Nos. 1, 2 and 3, respectively — the first time any artist has ever posted all three of any week's top albums.
But here, again, is where asterisks are due. First off, how many A-list superstars have dropped three new albums on a single day? Two artists have simultaneously debuted at No. 1 and No. 2 — Guns N' Roses, with 1991's Use Your Illusion I and Use Your Illusion II, and Nelly, with 2004's Suit and Sweat — but there's not much precedent for a threefer like this. But it's also not really the first time the week's three biggest albums have belonged to a single artist.
This gets a little weedy, but it's worth noting. Prior to December 2014, the Billboard 200 was entirely based on sales; streaming wasn't incorporated into the chart's metrics. And prior to December 2009, the Billboard 200 didn't include "catalog albums" — as in, old titles that were still popular but no longer promoted. Nowadays, old records are staples of the Billboard 200, which commingles old and new, sales and streaming… whatever pulls down the most numbers, that's what hits the chart, which is how Fleetwood Mac's Rumours still sits at No. 29 more than 50 years after its release.
But in July 2009, as fans were still reeling following the death of Michael Jackson, three of his albums — Thriller, plus the greatest-hits collections Number Ones and The Essential Michael Jackson — would have topped the Billboard 200 had they been eligible. Instead, they topped something called the Top Comprehensive Albums chart, which no longer exists.
So give Drake the milestone, but consider the context. And it's worth spelling out that, while ICEMAN had a genuinely colossal debut — it posted 463,000 equivalent album units, a number derived almost entirely from streaming — the other two new Drake albums landed more softly. Last week's No. 1 album, Noah Kahan's The Great Divide, drops to No. 4, but its equivalent album units (101,000) weren't far behind what either HABIBTI or MAID OF HONOUR pulled. Drake's performance is still impressive all around, though, especially when you consider that his numbers are drawn entirely from streaming and downloads; there aren't yet any physical sales to pad his stats.
Now, on to the singles, where more asterisks abound. This week, Drake sets and extends Hot 100 records left and right: He debuts 40 songs on this week's Hot 100, which is an all-time record, as is his placement of 42 songs across the chart. (He surpassed Morgan Wallen, who posted 37 songs on the Hot 100 following the release of I'm the Problem last year.) But, again, we're talking about an arms race that didn't exist prior to streaming; not too long ago, a song had to be released as an official single in order to be eligible for the Hot 100.
With nine of this week's top 10 songs (led by "Janice STFU" at No. 1), Drake extends his all-time record from 81 top 10 hits to 90; the runners-up are Taylor Swift, who's earned 69 top 10 hits (still a nice number!), and Madonna, who's earned 38. Sense a theme? Streaming has thrown these all-time records wildly out of whack. Michael Jackson landed 30 songs in the top 10 in his career, but they had to crack the chart one single at a time.
It's not that Drake's milestones aren't impressive; he still had to record and release songs fans wanted to hear. But his gaudy stats still require context. If Major League Baseball suddenly allowed sluggers to bat 20 times a game, a whole lot of home-run records would fall, you know?
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Drake's three new records gobble up the lion's share of headlines from this week's Billboard 200 albums chart, but they aren't the only hip-hop debuts in this week's top 10. The veteran rapper LUCKI posts the highest-charting record of his career as Dr*gs R Bad debuts at No. 9.
Last week's two biggest debuts — GREENGREEN, by the K-pop boy band CORTIS, and Brown, by R&B star Chris Brown — drop out of the top 10, but not terribly far: They're still at No. 30 and No. 17, respectively.
And don't let the flood of Drake music distract you from the ongoing chart resurgence of Michael Jackson. The success of the late singer's biopic, Michael, remains one of the biggest stories on the Billboard charts, as two of Jackson's catalog titles — Thriller and Number Ones — remain in this week's top 10, even amid the Drake surge. Many of Jackson's chart milestones have been surpassed in the streaming era, but his longevity remains an awful lot harder to duplicate.
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Naturally, Drake's domination of this week's top 10 — the field's only non-Drake song, Ella Langley's "Choosin' Texas," drops from No. 1 to No. 5 — has left little room for other noteworthy chart action. But two other Drake-adjacent footnotes bear mention.
The first is that the Drake song at No. 1, "Janice STFU," interpolates the best-known song by the Swedish singer-songwriter Lykke Li, 2011's "I Follow Rivers." That song was a worldwide chart-topper, and was even certified platinum in the U.S., but it never actually landed on a Billboard chart. Li has said that her recent sixth album, The Afterparty, would be her last, but maybe a joint songwriting credit on the Hot 100's No. 1 song will change her mind.
If so, Drake will have put some serious good into the world, and not for the first time this week. On the latest Hot 100, he's pulled off one other massive, infinitely laudable feat.
The chart's flood of new Drake songs has pushed several long-running hits below the threshold at which they're essentially relegated to oldies status — and have thus dropped off the chart entirely. So you can bid farewell, at least for now, to HUNTR/X's "Golden," Taylor Swift's "The Fate of Ophelia" and "Opalite," Cody Johnson's "The Fall," Justin Bieber's "Daisies" and… wait for it… Alex Warren's "Ordinary," which drops from No. 6 all the way off the chart after more than a full calendar year spent inside the top 10. The angels up in the clouds are jealous, knowing we found… a chart without… ORDINARY!
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