Drake’s ‘Certified Lover Boy’ Debuts at No.1 With Biggest Week of 2021
The accomplishment marks Drake’s 10th No.1 album.
Drake’s Certified Lover Boy has debuted in the No.1 spot on the Billboard 200 and had the best week for any album release this year, Billboard reports. The new album marks Drake’s 10th No.1 album.
Certified Lover Boy sold 613,000 equivalent album units, making it the biggest week for an album since Taylor Swift’s Folklore sold 846,000 units in 2020, according to Billboard.
It was recently reported that Certified Lover Boy officially broke the Spotify record for most streamed album in a single day. The project, released September 3, finds Drake displacing himself as the record holder. The rapper previously achieved the most streamed album in a single day record with his 2018 album Scorpion which racked up 132 million streams in its first day on the platform.
Alongside the album’s release on Friday, September 3, Drake shared the music video for his Certified Lover Boy collaboration with Future and Young Thug, “Way 2 Sexy.” The visual, which finds all three of the rappers tapping into their acting skills and portraying different characters, has reached nearly 23 million streams since its release.
For Certified Lover Boy’s official Apple Music bio, Drake described the album as “a combination of toxic masculinity and acceptance of truth which is inevitably heart-breaking.” The bio also included a dedication of the album to the late Nadia Ntuli and Mercedes Morr.
Drake produced Certified Lover Boy himself alongside Noah “40” Shebib, Oliver El-Khatib and Noel Cadastre. The project marks the rapper’s first official album release since Scorpion dominated in 2018 with singles like “Nice For What” and “In My Feelings.” In the interim, Drake did release two mixtapes, Care Package and Dark Lane Demo Tapes, in 2019 and 2020, respectively.
Certified Lover Boy features the most collaborations on a Drake project since 2018’s More Life. The album finds him teaming up with a major selection of artists including Lil Baby, Lil Durk, Giveon, Jay-Z, Travis Scott, Yebba, 21 Savage, Project Pat, Ty Dolla $ign, Lil Wayne, Rick Ross, Tems and Kid Cudi. There is also an uncredited contribution from Nicki Minaj on album cut “Papi’s Home.”
