On Drake's 2016 record "Grammys" with Future, The Six God rapped, "OVO we a gold mine, going gold in no time, doing plat-plat only."
Five years later and Drake is still doing plat-plat only.
Starting off the week with the announcement that Drake's Certified Lover Boy would be spending its second week atop the Billboard Top 200, we end the week with the announcement that, in just 21 days since releasing on September 3, the Toronto rapper's sixth studio album has officially sold more than one million total units. CLB just went platinum and became the fastest rap album to do so in 2021, according to chartdata on Twitter.
CLB's race to platinum certification has been a quick one and, thanks to the Future and Young Thug-assisted "Way 2 Sexy," a fun one. From the various photoshops of the album artwork to the short-lived competition between this record and Kanye West's Donda, CLB has been a shooting star and another notch in Drake's belt, joining all of his other studio albums (Thank Me Later, Take Care, Nothing Was the Same, Views and Scorpion) as RIAA certified platinum records.
And, in what feels like an announcement designed to run the score up, chartdata has announced that CLB will spend a third week atop the Billboard Top 200, selling 170K more units and becoming the only 2021 rap album to spend its first three weeks at #1.
Edging out Lil Nas X's Montero, which debuted at #2 on the Billboard Top 200, by more than 40K units this past week, CLB has been a testament to Drake's widespread popularity and ability to move an astonishing amount of music in a time when attention spans are at their smallest and the music cycle is at its fastest. B
Earlier in the week, Billboard raised the question: is Drake as big as Michael Jackson? So far, the overwhelming reaction on the internet has been that no, the Scorpion rapper is not as big as the King of Pop. But for his generation, it's hard to say that anyone (besides Taylor Swift) is as big as Drake. Jackson's Thriller put up numbers that will probably never be touched. He had grown men and women fainting at the sight of him. Drake doesn't have that. But he does have a sort of Midas touch that clearly, nobody else in the rap game has.
Frazer Harrison/Getty Images
It's to be seen how long this impressive stretch of #1s and platinum records will last but, at the pace Drake is moving at now, it doesn't feel like there is any end in sight.
At the end of the less listened to back half of 2014's "0-100/The Catch Up" Drake rapped, "I'm only 27 and I'm only getting better // If I haven't passed you yet, watch me catch up now, forreal." Seven years later and Drake is 34 and has seemingly passed everyone in his path. Forreal.
What do you think of Certified Lover Boy and the numbers it's putting up? Let us know in the comments.