Canadian rapper Drake has just earned his 11th number one with the release of his latest album, Honestly, Nevermind.
His seventh album, which is the follow-up to 2021’s widely celebrated Certified Lover Boy, surprised fans earlier this month when it arrived on streaming services only a matter of hours after the Toronto native announced it on his Instagram account.
Noted for its house and Baltimore club sound, the new record includes a feature from rapper 21 Savage, and was produced by a myriad of celebrated figures such as Black Coffee, Gordo, and 40. Honestly, Nevermind has been somewhat polarising amongst hardcore Drake fans because he has seemingly moved away from his trap-oriented sound, but in the main, it has been welcomed as a refreshing chapter in his saga, meaning that it topped the US Billboard chart with ease, despite the stylistic change.
Featuring the singles, ‘Sticky’, ‘Massive’ and ‘Falling Back’, Drake’s new album earned 204,000 equivalent album units in its first week of release in the US, and 11,000 album sales. It’s also racked up a total of 250.23million streams, giving it the fourth-largest streaming week behind Bad Bunny’s Un Verano Sin Ti, Kendrick Lamar’s Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers and Future’s Never Liked You.
Drake’s new number one album moves him past Kanye West and Eminem, landing him tied with Bruce Springsteen and Barbara Streisand for the third-most number one albums in Billboard history, behind Jay-Z (14) and The Beatles (19).
Honestly, Nevermind hitting the top spot has also awarded Drake the most number one albums on the Billboard 200 for artists who debuted this century, beating Kanye West and Taylor Swift. This triumphant run hasn’t stopped there either. Only a day after the release of the album, Drake also smashed the record for global first-day streams for a ‘dance’ album on Apple Music.
