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Drake’s Views Album Spends Two Months At No. 1, One Dance Breaks UK Singles Chart Record

By Frank Yemi
Published on: 18:57 PST, Jun 29, 2016

Drake’s Views is looking pretty good as he reigns the Billboard 200 chart for the eighth week, marking two months at the no. 1 spot. Although the album garnered mixed reviews, it is still selling at a high rate in the digital streaming era where a certain number of streams count as an album sale.

“One Dance,” which features Nigerian superstar Wizkid & Kyla, has ruled the UK singles chart for 11 weeks. This marks the longest running single of the digital era for any UK single.

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Billboard reports that Drake’s Views sold 124,000 equivalent album units in a tracking week ending June 23rd. Most of these sales come from streams, while 33,000 of the sales come from traditional album buys.

This is an historic album for Hip Hop music in terms of commercial appeal. Drake’s Views has spent the most time at the number 1 spot since Eminem’s The Marshall Mathers LP, which was released about 16 years ago.

Hit singles, such as “One Dance” benefit Drake with the new streaming equivalent sales. High in demand singles will make up track equivalent albums (TEA) and streaming equivalent albums (SEA), which counts as albums sold.

Views will become the longest reigning rap album at No. 1, if it can hold the Billboard 200 spot for one more week.

Even after two months of release, Views had about 105 million streams last week. This shows that Drake’s album is being streamed at an unprecedented rate.

With prominent artists such as Beyoncé, Kanye West, and Drake performing very well with streams, this may mark the death of traditional album sales. Most artists of this era have embraced streaming, with the exception of Adele, who encouraged fans to buy copies of her album by not making it available on streaming services.

Drake’s Views held off the Red Hot Chili Peppers from the No. 1 spot. The legendary band released their new album The Getaway, and it landed on the No.2 spot on the Billboard 200.

YG’s new album, Still Brazy, which is highly acclaimed by critics landed on the No. 6 spot with 38,000 album equivalent sales.

Drake is reported to be shooting the “One Dance” video in South Africa, where the star is popular. The release of the official video may help boost sales and keep both the single and album at the No. 1 spot as Drake sets to make history with his latest project.

In an interview with Zane Lowe earlier this year Drake talked about Views:

“This album is probably my highest level of vocal performance… Do I want to listen to myself or other songs that I’m into? If I didn’t wanna listen to myself, that’s a problem there.”

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Drake also decided to remove several features from the album. He also explained why Kanye West and Jay Z don’t appear:

“I just ended up going with my version of the song… Jay didn’t really do a verse. I was just trying to get ‘Ye on it first. Jay kinda just did my first few lines for me and that’s how we flexed it… It didn’t play out how I wanted it to go.”

Despite not appearing on the album, Kanye West has some production credits on Views, which is a return in favor as Drake also worked on The Life of Pablo, which Yeezus released earlier this year.

[Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images]

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