Kanye West fans are certainly passionate about the rapper's music, but as of this past weekend, they're almost equally passionate about making sure that his songs are more popular than any music from Taylor Swift's catalog.
Back in August, we reported that something called "Hey Mama Day" was going down in November 10th. In the wake of Swift dropping her latest album, Reputation, which carries several tracks whose lyrics take more than a passing swipe at the Chicago native, members of the Kanye community on Reddit decided to band together and hold a day where the goal became to top Swift's streaming numbers on Spotify's daily chart.
By the calculations of one Facebook user, as per an elaboration from The Ringer, if approximately 30,000 people were to stream “Hey Mama” for 12 hours straight, they’d hit a total that would be over four million streams. This figure would be right around what Swift got for her hit single, “Look What You Made Me Do" the week of August 27th. A tall order to be sure, but definitely not impossible. By the time the 10th rolled around, tens of thousands of supporters were said to be on board with the cause, with some even tweeting about their experience.
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As one might gather from the social media activity, one of the main reasons that many turned up for the occasion was to honor the memory of the late Donda West, Kanye's mother, who passed away ten years ago to the day. In many countries, the collective efforts of Yeezy Nation paid off in spades, with The Ringer reporting that the single quickly became the most-streamed song in the U.S. on the platform for the day. “Hey Mama” also climbed to No. 33 of the iTunes charts in New Zealand, cracked the Top 100 in Australia and even went as high as No. 3 on iTunes in Armenia.
The Spotify results were also encouraging, with a reported increase in stream count from 23.6 to 24.3 million, which is roughly 700,000 spins. That was theoretically enough to crack Spotify's Top 200 daily songs list, which bottoms out around 500,000 streams. However, the feat didn't register on the platforms official chart updates. As of this writing, Spotify hadn't commented on this exclusion.
Coincidence or conspiracy? You be the judge.