Drake‘s record for the biggest streaming week for an album in United States history has been smashed by Taylor Swift, who also tied a chart record set by JAY-Z in the process.
With the release of her new album The Tortured Poets Department a little over one week back, she broke the streaming record previously held by Drake’s 2018 album, Scorpion — whereas the latter did a whopping 746 million streams in its first week, its successor just did 891.37 million.
Landing at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 tally with 2.61 million album-equivalent units, the 34-year-old is tied with Hov as the solo artist with the most No. 1 albums in Billboard 200 history — they each have 14. The only act with more chart-topping albums than them are The Beatles, at 19.
Meanwhile, Drake’s 2016 album Views just turned eight years old, and the Toronto native took a trip down memory lane to celebrate it.
Taking to Instagram in the early hours of Monday (April 29), Drizzy shared a series of throwback pictures from that era, including early art designs, promotional campaign material and a screenshot of a text from his business partner Oliver El-Khatib about enlisting the late Virgil Abloh for an OVO Sound Radio mix.
“Views April 29,” he wrote in the caption.
The 6 God’s nostalgic post was met with a flood of fond memories from fans, with one writing: “8 years ago this project changed my life.”
Another added: “You just had to be dere.”
Views was the rapper and singer’s fourth studio album, debuting at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart with over a million album-equivalent sales in its first week — this remains the highest tally of his career.
The project was made up of evergreen hits such as “Hotline Bling,” “One Dance” and “Controlla,” with guest appearances from Rihanna, Future, PARTYNEXTDOOR, Pimp C, Wizkid and dvsn.
During an interview with Zane Lowe on Beats 1 around the time of its release, Drake described Views as the best vocal performance of his career up until that point.
“This album is probably my highest level of vocal performance,” he said at the time. “Do I want to listen to myself or other songs that I’m into? If I didn’t wanna listen to myself, that’s a problem there.”
