As I write this Drake’s ‘More Life’ “playlist” is cranking in the background, streaming off of Apple Music. The infectious project has been the talk of the town since it was released on Saturday. Everybody I know has heard it, countless quotable lyrics have been tweeted, and the physical copies haven’t even been released yet. With that said it is no coincidence that the “playlist” (or album, whatever you wanna call it) is projected to debut at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart.
Some of the projections that have been reported estimate it will sell anywhere from 500,000 to 550,000 (200,000-250,000 traditional album sales) in the US for the first week, ending on March 23rd, according to Billboard.
The success of the ‘More Life’ is set to surpass Drake’s ‘VIEWS’ album and become his most successful body of work to date. The project beautifully blends hard-hitting tracks like “Free Smoke” and “No Long Talk” with livelier tracks like “Madiba Riddim” and “Blem,” attracting a wide-ranging audience.
Billboard has reported that ‘More Life’ could break a record for most streams by an album’s singles, which was previously set by, you guessed it, ‘VIEWS’. The ‘VIEWS’ album garnered 163,000 streaming equivalent units (245.1 million song streams) in its first week.
Along with the Billboard projections, Drizzy continues to break records on both Apple Music and Spotify, where he recently became the first ever 10-billion streams artist. The newest broken record occurred on Saturday, when he earned best first day streams for an album with 61,302,082 streams on Spotify. On Apple Music he set the straming record in one day with 89.9-million streams. The record-breaking continued Sunday, when he dethroned Ed Sheeran with 76,355,041 streams on Spotify, making it the best one-day streamed album.
With all the early success and unprecedented numbers are indicators that ‘More Life’ will be Champagne’s seventh consecutive No. 1 album, though he considers it a playlist. His only album to not reach No. 1 was his debut album, ‘So Far Gone’. Guess it really is “all hits no misses.”
‘More Life’, more success.
@IAMBNYCE