There now seems to be three absolutes in life: death, taxes and Drake dominating charts of any kind.
Of modern streaming-era superstars in Post Malone, Adele, Taylor Swift and Billie Eilish, the inimitable Aubrey “Drake” Graham triumphantly holds a slew of music’s most impressive statistics — which includes longstanding streaming records that were broken by his latest project, Certified Lover Boy.
Amid the awards, pomp and circumstance Drizzy and his fan base have become used to, his newest accolade, however, may be the most mind-boggling of them all.
On April 15, Billboard confirmed that Champagne Papi had accumulated more streams in 2021 than all music released before 1980. More specifically, all songs and albums that came out from 1950-1979 — that have subsequently been put on streaming services after their initial release — accounted for 0.6% of streams in 2021.
All of Drake’s streams in 2021 accounted for 0.8% of DSP streams. Likely, most of these streams came from his September studio album CLB, which spent more than a month at the No. 1 spot on the Billboard’s Top 200 Albums chart.
In fact, on April 17, Chart Data announced that the album still sits at No. 6 on the Billboard 200. It garnered over 30,000 units last week, outselling Fivio Foreign (29,000), Coi Leray (9,000) and EST Gee and 42 Dugg’s collab effort (26,000) nearly eight months since its release.
Additionally, CLB became the first album in 2021 to reach 2 million total units sold last January — demonstrating how commanding Drake was in the second half of the year.
With this in mind, the musicians that were prominent before the 1980s — long before the streaming era — truly have nothing to be ashamed of. While their music encapsulates a moment in time — an era much like the Drakes, Futures and Young Thugs of the current culture — Drizzy was the No. 1 most streamed artist last year, totaling over 8 billion streams and evidently blew all of his competition out of the water.
It seems that no matter how many years go by, or how fans perceive Drake’s projects quality wise, it is inevitable that he will rack up the numbers that tighten his grip on the industry.
