‘Certified Lover Boy’ Out-Streamed ‘Donda’ in Just Three Days

In late August, much ado was being made about the potential charts battle brewing between Kanye West and Drake, who had, for years, maintained a relatively benign on-again, off-again beef, but never actually duked it out on the charts. But Donda, Kanye’s 10th studio album, dropped five days before Certified Lover Boy, Drake’s sixth, meaning it had no problems whatsoever taking the Number One spot on the IndieLand Top 200 Albums Chart.

But if they had gone head to head? It wouldn’t have been close. 

In just three days, Certified Lover Boy has already out-streamed Donda, according to Alpha Data, the analytics provider that powers the IndieLand Charts. From Friday through Sunday alone, Certified Lover Boy saw over 430 million on-demand audio streams in the U.S. By comparison, Donda pulled in just under 423 million in its first eight days on streaming. 

Donda was, by all accounts, a commercial smash. Despite having just five days’ worth of activity in its first tracking week, it broke the record for the biggest RS 200 debut of 2021 so far. All of the album’s 27 songs landed on the Top 100 Songs Chart, marking the second most simultaneous entries in the chart’s history. But no one comes close to Drake on the charts. He holds the record for the most weeks atop the Artists 500 chart and is repeatedly the biggest artist of the year. Kanye, meanwhile, tops the Artist 500 Chart for just his second time this week, as he typically comes in somewhere in the low 20s.

For Drake, the only real competition is with himself. Certified Lover Boy has the potential to break the record for the biggest streaming debut in Alpha Data history. After just three days, it already ranks second, behind only Scorpion. Scorpion pulled in just over 725 million streams in its first week.

Stay tuned for the final version of the RS 200 on Monday to see just how big Certified Lover Boy ends up.