Drake Set for Career-Best Sales Week With 'Views'
Drake’s new
Views album is set for a spectacular debut at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart. Industry forecasters suggest the hip-hop star’s latest effort could sell more than 800,000 copies in the U.S. in the week ending May 5. The set was released exclusively for sale through the iTunes Store and to stream via Apple Music on April 29 by Young Money/Cash Money/Republic Records.
Further, the album’s overall equivalent album unit sum for the week could surpass 900,000. Sources at Republic Records say that
Views earned over 630,000 equivalent units in its first day at Apple Music and iTunes combined.
Drake's 'Views' Tracks Conquer Billboard + Twitter Trending 140 Chart
The Billboard 200 chart ranks the most popular albums of the week based on
multi-metric consumption, which includes traditional album sales, track equivalent albums (TEA) and streaming equivalent albums (SEA). The top 10 of the new May 21-dated Billboard 200 chart (where Drake could debut at No. 1) is scheduled to be revealed on Billboard’s websites on Sunday, May 8. (The May 14-dated list’s top 10 is still waiting in the wings, and it is expected
Beyonce’s
Lemonade will top the tally.)
Provided that
Views’ sales are as robust as predicted, then it would also give Drake his largest sales week ever. His current high was logged when
Nothing Was the Same debuted at No. 1 with 658,000 sold in its first week, according to Nielsen Music.
Drake Offers His POV on Love, Success & Toronto On 'Views': A First Listen
Views follows Drake’s five consecutive No. 1-debuting full-length albums on the Billboard 200:
What a Time To Be Alive (with
Future, in 2015),
If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late (2015),
Nothing Was the Same,
Take Care (2012) and
Thank Me Later (2010). His only charting album to miss the top was his debut EP,
So Far Gone, which peaked at No. 6 in 2009.
If
Views starts with over 800,000 copies sold, it will be just the 10th album to sell more than 800,000 copies in a single week in the past 10 years — and the first by a male artist to do so since
Justin Timberlake’s
The 20/20 Experiencelaunched with 968,000 in the week ending March 24, 2013. (The last album to sell more than 800,000 in a week was
Adele’s
25, which managed the feat in three separate weeks at the end of 2015.)