Drake’s Scorpion Becomes First Album to Reach 1 Billion Streams in a Week

Drake’s fifth studio album Scorpion hasn’t exactly blown critics away, but it’s made a massive impact on listeners since its June 29 release, becoming the first-ever album to surpass 1 billion worldwide streams in a week, with 745.9 million on-demand audio streams in the U.S. alone.

Along the way, Scorpion topped the all-time U.S. one-week streaming record in under three days and broke the all-time global one-week streaming record in only four, making for what a press release describes as “the biggest debut of the streaming era.”

Scorpion is Drake’s eighth-consecutive #1 album—a streak that ties him with Kanye West, Eminem and The Beatles, per Billboard—and with it, he’s notched the biggest first week of any 2018 album, as well as the biggest first week since 2017. All of the above gives the rapper the most RIAA certifications of any artist in history: 142 million digital single sales to date. And of the 10 biggest individual album streaming weeks, Drake has four.

All of this is to say, when Drake raps, “House on both coasts, but I live on the charts,” on Scorpion’s “Survival,” he’s telling the truth. The rapper is basically too big to fail at this point, as evidenced by Spotify’s unprecedented efforts to promote his new album. Even Pusha T’s ruthless “The Story of Adidon” couldn’t slow down the Drake train.

You can stream Scorpion here to find out what all the fuss is about.