Drake’s More Life will likely lead to more wins on the Billboard 200, as the “playlist” project is expected to top the chart in its opening week.
Projections have it selling 500-550,000 equivalent album units (200-250,000 traditional album sales) in the U.S. for the week ending March 23, according to Billboard.
More Life’s success could be the largest for any effort in 2017 and for any LP since Drake’s own Views, which opened with 1.04 million units in its first week back in May of 2016, and that’s with less than a week’s worth of tracking, since it was released on Saturday.
According to Billboard, More Life could set a record for most streams garnered by an album’s songs in a week. If he does that, he would be breaking his own record, which he set when Views earned 163,000 streaming equivalent units (245.1 million song streams) in its first week.
More Life will be Drake’s seventh consecutive No. 1. Only 2009’s So Far Gone, the rapper’s debut EP, failed to top the chart, peaking at No. 6.
The record shattering continues over at Spotify, where he was recently named its first 10 billion streams artist. Over the weekend, he also broke a record for best first day streams for an album with 61,302,082 streams on its first full day. It also destroyed the best one-day streams for an artist with 76,355,041 streams on March 19. Both records were previously held by Ed Sheeran, who dropped ÷ earlier this month.
All of this is based on streaming only. Physical copies of Drake’s More Life are expected to arrive in the coming weeks.