Drake‘s album Views will debut at the number one spot on the Billboard 200 chart, knocking Beyonce’s Lemonade out of the throne.
Drake shortened his newest album title from Views From The 6, and perhaps for good reason, it’s best view is from the top.
The highly publicized and criticized album stormed into the Billboard 200 charts and will debut at number one after just one week of release. The album was an Apple Music exclusive for one week, finally becoming available on other streaming platforms on Friday, May 6. A physical CD was released as well.
Billboard reports:
The set earned 1.04 million equivalent album units in the week ending May 5 in the U.S., according to Nielsen Music. Traditional album sales comprised 852,000 copies of that sum (a slight upgrade from the 851,000 that was previously reported).
It was earlier reported that Views’ sales start is a personal best sales week for Drake, the largest for any album in 2016, and the biggest for a male artist in over three years. The last album by a man to post a bigger sales week was Justin Timberlake’s The 20/20 Experience when it debuted with 968,000 copies sold in the week ending March 24, 2013.
Views also made history by being streamed a record 245.1 million times since it has been released. It should be noted that those streams are a culmination of the album itself, the tracks that were released as singles (“Pop Style,” “One Dance”) and the streams from Drake’s monster single “Hotline Bling” were counted toward the total as well.
Drake previously set the record for Spotify streams when his 2015 release If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late was streamed 17.3 million times in three days.
Drake-mania will continue throughout the summer. He is slated to be both the host and guest performer for Saturday Night Live on May 14. He and his What A Time To Be Alive collaborator Future will embark on their Summer Sixteen tour starting July 20. Drake’s annual OVO Fest will kick off on July 29.
