On the Charts: Drake Rules But Chance the Rapper Makes History
Chance the Rapper didn’t debut at Number One, but his Coloring Book managed to enter the Billboard 200 at Number Eight despite not selling a single copy: Thanks to the Billboard 200’s new metrics that count streaming totals toward album sales, Coloring Book‘s 57.3 million streams on Apple Music translated into 38,000 stream equivalent albums (SEAs) on the charts. Coloring Book is the first streaming-only album in charts history, Billboard reports.
(Kanye West’s The Life of Pablo, which similarly posted huge streaming numbers upon its release, was disqualified as Tidal never shared its streaming numbers upon their exclusive Pablo window; West’s album debuted atop the Billboard 200 two months later after Pablo was released to other services and made available for purchase, selling 28,000 copies.)
Drake ruled the Billboard 200 for the third consecutive week as the rapper’s Views remained glued to Number One. In its third week of release, Drake’s latest LP sold an additional 239,000 copies to become the first album since Adele’s 25 in January to reside in the top spot for three straight weeks.
While Views‘ traditional sales dipped by over 50 percent, the album was able to remain Number One thanks to its availability on other streaming services after two weeks of Apple Music exclusivity. Beyoncé‘s Lemonade remained at Number Two with 128,000 total copies; of that total, 92,000 were from traditional album sales, making Lemonade technically the week’s bestselling record.
Meghan Trainor’s second album Thank You was the week’s highest charting debut, bowing in at Number Three and 107,000 copies. Despite winning a Best New Artist Grammy in the interim, Thank You couldn’t match the stellar debut of Trainor’s debut Title as that LP opened up at Number One with 238,000 total copies when it was released in January 2015.
Number Four was reserved for Pierce the Veil’s Misadventures, which sold 54,000 copies in its first week of release. That was followed by Rihanna’s Anti at Number Five, Keith Urban’s Ripcord at Number Six and Prince’s The Very Best of Prince at Number Seven.
Radiohead‘s A Moon Shaped Pool dipped to Number Nine in its second week on the charts, selling another 34,000 copies. Sugarland singer Jennifer Nettles’ solo LP Playing With Fire closed out the Top 10.
Next week, we’ll find out if Ariana Grande’s Dangerous Woman can finally dethrone Drake.
Chance the Rapper released his third mixtape, ‘Coloring Book,’ which features collaborations from Kanye West, Future and Justin Bieber. Watch here.