When Drake announced his album Certified Lover Boy would finally arrive on September 3, goading Kanye West to push up his release date for Donda, he didn’t just fuel their beef — he set up a good old-fashioned chart battle. Weeks later, the results are in, leaving little question that this round goes to Drake. Certified Lover Boy debuted on the Billboard 200 with 613,000 units, the biggest showing in over a year, since Taylor Swift’s folklore in July. That number came largely from streaming, with Drake earning 743.67 million streams of the album’s tracks, equivalent to 562,000 album units, a number that alone would’ve made Drake the best debut in over a year. In fact, it’s the second-highest streaming week of all time, just shy of a record Drake himself set in 2018 with Scorpion’s 745.92 million streams. And speaking of past Drake releases, CLB brings the rapper up to a milestone ten No. 1s. As if he needed anything else to brag about.
For one short week, though, West’s Donda held the title of the biggest album of 2021, after topping the Billboard 200 with 309,000 units (and earning West his tenth No. 1). That number, which Drake came just shy of doubling, came from an abbreviated tracking week, after West released the album on Sunday morning rather than the standard midnight Friday drop. Now, after logging its first full week on the charts, Donda earned an additional 141,000 units — still not enough to touch Drake and CLB.