As soon as Drake’s album dropped, there was zero doubtScorpion would top the Billboard 200. Almost immediately, reports began spilling in that Drake was smashing every streaming record known to man and then some. The album went platinum the day it dropped, and though early sales projections fluctuated a little, they still anticipated the 25-song behemoth would be a success.
Well ladies and gentlemen, the numbers are in and Scorpion unsurprisingly took the No. 1 spot on the Billboard 200, giving the Canadian rapper his fifth consecutive chart-topping album and eighth consecutive No. 1 project overall. Per Billboard, this eighth chart-topper ties him with Kanye West and Eminem for the second-most No. 1s for hip-hop artists (behind JAY-Z's 14), and with West, Eminem, and the Beatles for the longest streak of No. 1 projects.
The album pushed 732,000 album equivalent units (160,000 pure sales), meeting projections that it would sell in the 725-775,000 range. That makes it the biggest overall week of any 2018 album thus far, and the biggest since Taylor Swift's Reputation in December. It's also the biggest album on the Hip-Hop/R&B charts since Drake's Views in 2016, which pushed 1.04 million units.
To compare, Kanye West’s Ye moved 208,000 equivalent album units in its first week at No. 1, while Pusha-T’s DAYTONAdebuted at No. 3 on the Billboard 200 with 77,000.
As reported last week, Scorpion is one of the first albums to be influenced by Billboard’s new streaming rules. Under the new rules, paid subscriptions hold a bigger weight compared to free ones. It takes 1,250 streams of an album to equal one sale on paid subscriptions, while 3,750 streams will equal one sale on free streaming options, like Spotify's free tier or YouTube.
The album's first single "God's Plan" has also become the most-streamed song of the year after earning 1.121 billion streams, making it the only song to top a billion streams in 2018. “Nice for What” and “God’s Plan” have gone platinum several times over, and though it’s not on Scorpion, Lil Baby’s “Yes Indeed” featuring Drake also went platinum this past week.
