Drake says that Billboard "fixed" the charts back in 2018 after the success of his album, Scorpion. Explaining his theory to DJ Akademiks, Drake said that the move was done in an effort to boost other artists.
“I mean, at the end of the day, ever since we were gunning off the charts from Scorpion, they fixed the charts anyway,” Drake claimed. “So it is what it is. You know, they had to give other people a fair shot.”
From there, he spoke about the projections for his new effort with 21 Savage, Her Loss: “We’ll do what we do. It’s more about the feeling, the momentum; it’s not about how long it stays.”
While Drake didn't go into specifics, he was likely referring to a change in the way Billboard counts streams and album sales. Prior to the week that Scorpion was released, Billboard counted 1,500 streams equal to a single album sale. Beginning the next week, they implemented two different ratios to determine the value of a stream. From then on, there was a disparity in the value between a song streamed by a "paying subscriber" to a platform like Apple Music and Spotify versus that of a “free user.”
Despite the change, Scorpion still debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 with 723,000 album-equivalent units. The album produced numerous singles that landed in the top twenty of the Billboard Hot 100 including singles "God's Plan", "Nice for What", "I'm Upset", "Don't Matter to Me", "In My Feelings", "Nonstop", and "Mob Ties."
Her Loss is projected to move 400,000 equivalent album units in its first week of availability.
Check out Drake's comments on the Billboard charts below.
[Via]