Drake Shatters Kanye West’s Short-Lived Artists 500 Chart Record

While Drake is no stranger to the top of the Artists 500 chart, the rapper more than outdid himself and everyone else in the chart’s history as he took the Number One spot for the 32nd time with a record-smashing 793.8 million song streams.

Drake’s remarkable tally following the release of Certified Lover Boy nearly doubled the very brief weekly streaming record Kanye West set last week when Donda helped him pull in 410.8 million song streams. West still did well enough to land at Number Two this week with 230.8 million song streams, though the gap between that number and Drake’s is now the largest gap in Artists 500 history.

To accompany his Artists 500 domination, Drake became the 16th artist to also land at Number One on the Top 100 Songs chart and the Top 200 Albums chart. Certified Lover Boy topped the RS200 with 680.9 million song streams to help it move 595,300 album-equivalent units, while “Way 2 Sexy,” featuring Future and Young Thug, landed at Number One on the RS100 with 57.8 million streams (CLB tracks occupied the first 14 spaces on the RS100 chart).

The Rolling Stone Artists 500 chart ranks the most-streamed artists of the week in the United States, taking into account audio streams across an artist’s entire catalog during the tracking period. The chart does not include passive listening such as terrestrial radio or digital radio. The Artists 500 is updated daily, and each week Rolling Stone finalizes and publishes an official version of the chart, covering the seven-day period ending the previous Thursday.

While CLB was the biggest release of last week, other new arrivals prompted some movement further down the Artists 500. Imagine Dragons cracked the Top 30 of the chart for the first time, landing at Number 29 with 40.6 million song streams as their LP, Mercury — Act 1, bowed at Number Nine on the RS200. Iron Maiden also made their debut on the RS500, landing at Number 483 with six million streams following the release of Senjutsu (the album actually debuted at Number Four on the RS200, though its strength there was driven by actual sales over streams).

Elsewhere, Memphis rapper Big30 hit a new peak of Number 62 with 26.4 million streams, rising 241 ranks following the release of King of Killbranch. And pop legends ABBA cracked the top 200 for the first time as they hit a new peak of Number 194 with 12.8 million streams following the arrival of their first new music in 39 years.