Much was made in late August about a possible chart war building between Kanye West and Drake, who had had a relatively mild on-again, off-again beef for years but had never really slugged it out on the charts. However, because Donda, Kanye’s tenth studio album, was released five days before Certified Lover Boy, Drake’s sixth, it had little trouble reaching the top of the Rolling Stone Top 200 Albums Chart.
According to Alpha Data, the analytics service that powers the Rolling Stone Charts, “Certified Lover Boy” has already out-streamed Donda in just three days. Certified Lover Boy had over 430 million on-demand audio streams in the United States alone from Friday to Sunday. Donda, on the other hand, made slightly under $423 million in its first eight days on streaming.
Donda was a commercial success by all accounts. It smashed the record for the biggest RS 200 debut of 2021 despite only having five days of activity in its initial tracking week. The album’s 27 songs all charted on the Top 100 Songs Chart at the same time, establishing the second-highest number of simultaneous entries in the chart’s history. On the other hand, no one compares to Drake in terms of chart success. He holds the record for the most weeks at the top of the Artists 500 chart, and he is consistently the year’s largest artist. Kanye West, meanwhile, is at the top of the Artist 500 Chart for the second time this week, despite usually being in the low 20s.
Drake’s only true competitor is himself. Certified Lover Boy has the potential to set a new record for Alpha Data’s biggest streaming launch. It is currently ranked second, behind only Scorpion, after only three days. In its first week, Scorpion received over 725 million streams.
Keep an eye out on Monday for the final version of the RS 200 to see how big Certified Lover Boy grows.
