Leading the way, Drake’s “Way 2 Sexy,” featuring Future and Young Thug, launches at No. 1 on the Hot 100. In all, Drake debuts 21 songs on the Hot 100, all from his new album Certified Lover Boy (released Sept. 3 on OVO Sound/Republic Records), which blasts in at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart with 613,000 equivalent album units earned in the U.S. in the week ending Sept. 9, according to MRC Data, the biggest weekly sum for an album in over a year.
Meanwhile, with all nine of Drake’s new Hot 100 top 10s from Certified Lover Boy, the set is the first album ever to generate as many as nine top 10 Hot 100 hits.
The Hot 100 blends all-genre U.S. streaming (official audio and official video), radio airplay and sales data. All charts (dated Sept. 18) will update on Billboard.com tomorrow (Sept. 14). For all chart news, you can follow @billboard and @billboardcharts on both Twitter and Instagram.
Here’s a look at Drake’s nine songs in the Hot 100’s top 10, and the U.S. streams, radio airplay and sales in the Sept. 3-9 tracking week that drove their debuts:
Rank, Title, Artist Billing (if other than Drake), (Streams, Airplay Audience, Sales)
No. 1, “Way 2 Sexy,” feat. Future & Young Thug (67.3 million streams, 7.7 million in airplay audience, 7,000 sold)
The song’s streaming sum marks the second-best in a single week in 2021, trailing only the opening frame of Olivia Rodrigo’s “Drivers License” (76.1 million, Jan. 23); “Sexy” is also being promoted as a radio single to pop, rhythmic and R&B/hip-hop formats.
No. 2, “Girls Want Girls,” feat. Lil Baby (57.4 million streams, 1.5 million in airplay audience, 3,000 sold)
No. 3, “Fair Trade,” feat. Travis Scott (53.8 million streams, 2.4 million in airplay audience, 5,800 sold)
No. 4, “Champagne Poetry” (48.3 million streams, 297,000 in airplay audience, 1,900 sold)
No. 5, “Knife Talk,” feat. 21 Savage & Project Pat (45.9 million streams, 141,000 in airplay audience, 3,300 sold)
No. 7, “In the Bible,” feat. Lil Durk & Giveon (41.4 million streams, 489,000 in airplay audience, 800 sold)
No. 8, “Papi’s Home” (39.9 million streams, 663,000 in airplay audience, 1,800 sold)
No. 9, “TSU” (39.8 million streams, 1.2 million in airplay audience, 1,500 sold)
No. 10, “Love All,” feat. JAY-Z (39.1 million streams, 2.5 million in airplay audience, 3,200 sold)
Not ‘2 Sexy’ for No. 1: As “Way 2 Sexy” soars in atop the Hot 100, Drake notches his ninth No. 1.
Here’s a recap of all his Hot 100 leaders:
“What’s My Name?,” Rihanna feat. Drake (one week at No. 1, beginning Nov. 20, 2010)
“Work,” Rihanna feat. Drake (nine weeks, beginning March 5, 2016)
“One Dance,” Drake feat. WizKid & Kyla (10 weeks, beginning May 21, 2016)
“God’s Plan,” Drake (11 weeks, beginning Feb. 3, 2018)
“Nice for What,” Drake (eight weeks, beginning April 21, 2018)
“In My Feelings,” Drake (10 weeks, beginning July 21, 2018)
“Toosie Slide,” Drake (one week, April 18, 2020)
“What’s Next,” Drake (one week, March 20, 2021)
“Way 2 Sexy,” Drake feat. Future and Young Thug (one week to-date, Sept. 18, 2021)
Plus, “Sexy” is Drake’s record-tying fifth song to debut at No. 1 on the Hot 100, following “God’s Plan,” “Nice for What,” “Toosie Slide” and “What’s Next.” He matches Ariana Grande for the mark.
Drake debuts atop Hot 100 & Billboard 200: As Certified Lover Boy and “Way 2 Sexy” premiere at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 and Hot 100, respectively, Drake joins Justin Bieber, BTS and Taylor Swift as the only acts to have debuted atop both charts simultaneously.
Swift inaugurated the club when Folklore and “Cardigan” began atop the respective charts dated Aug. 8, 2020; BTS’ Be and “Life Goes On” followed (Dec. 5); Swift repeated the feat with Evermore and “Willow” (Dec. 26); and Bieber doubled up atop the April 3 rankings with the entrances of Justice and “Peaches,” featuring Daniel Caesar and Giveon.
Future’s first Hot 100 No. 1: With “Way 2 Sexy,” Future celebrates his first Hot 100 leader, ending the longest wait for a first No. 1 among chart-topping acts (by total appearances), as he now totals 126 career entries.
The song is Future’s fourth Hot 100 top 10, and third with Drake, after “Life is Good,” by Future featuring Drake, peaked at No. 2 for eight weeks in January-March 2020 and “Love Me,” by Lil Wayne featuring Drake and Future, reached No. 9 in March 2013. In between, Future’s own “Mask Off” hit No. 5 in May 2017.
Young Thug’s third Hot 100 No. 1: Young Thug scores his third Hot 100 No. 1, following his fellow featured turns on Travis Scott’s “Franchise,” also featuring M.I.A. (one week at No. 1, October 2020), and Camila Cabello’s “Havana” (one, January 2018).
“Way 2 Sexy” is also Young Thug’s fifth Hot 100 top 10.
“2 … 3 Sexy”: “Way 2 Sexy” interpolates Right Said Fred’s ’90s smash “I’m Too Sexy,” and now a third iteration of the composition takes a winning turn on the Hot 100’s catwalk.
The British act’s original led the Hot 100 for three weeks in February 1992. In 2017, Swift’s “Look What You Made Me Do,” which likewise reworks elements of “I’m Too Sexy,” spent three weeks at No. 1 that September.
Drake meets The Beatles: Drake becomes the second act ever to monopolize the Hot 100’s top five in a single week. The Beatles first achieved the feat on the chart dated April 4, 1964, at the heights of early U.S. Beatlemania, with these five classics:
No. 1, “Can’t Buy Me Love”
No. 2, “Twist and Shout”
No. 3, “She Loves You”
No. 4, “I Want to Hold Your Hand”
No. 5, “Please Please Me”
(“Chart Crawls With Beatles,” a page 1 headline read in that week’s issue, above a story by Jack Maher and one of the Hot 100’s founding fathers, Tom Noonan.)
Notably, two of The Beatles assist in Drake’s record-tying week. “Champagne Poetry,” at No. 4, interpolates The Beatles’ “Michelle,” and John Lennon and Paul McCartney receive writing credit on the new entry. (“Michelle,” released on the Fab Four’s 1965 album Rubber Soul, became a worldwide hit and won the 1967 Grammy Award for song of the year. While the song was not released as a single for The Beatles in the U.S., three “Michelle” covers hit the Hot 100 in 1966: by David & Jonathan [No. 18 peak], Bud Shank [No. 65] and Billy Vaughn [No. 77].)
Drake is, thus, the first soloist to own the entire top five on the Hot 100 in a single week, as well as the first artist to debut songs at Nos. 1-5 in one frame. For the latter mark, he bests his triple on the chart dated March 20, when he became the first act to debut titles in the top three together: “What’s Next”; “Wants and Needs,” featuring Lil Baby; and “Lemon Pepper Freestyle,” featuring Rick Ross, at Nos. 1, 2, and 3, respectively.
Nine of top 10, topping … Drake: Meanwhile, with nine of the Hot 100’s top 10, Drake breaks his own record for the most simultaneous top 10 Hot 100 hits. On the chart dated July 14, 2018, he claimed a prior-record seven top 10 spots, concurrent with the chart start of Scorpion, his last proper studio album before Certified Lover Boy.
A record nine Hot 100 top 10s from one album: In its debut chart week, Certified Lover Boy becomes the album with the most Hot 100 top 10s from a single set, thanks to Drake’s nine debuts from the LP.
Certified Lover Boy eclipses four albums that each spun off seven Hot 100 top 10s: Michael Jackson’s Thriller (1982-84); Bruce Springsteen’s Born in the U.S.A. (1984-85); Janet Jackson’s Rhythm Nation 1814 (1989-91); and Drake’s own Scorpion (2018).
Certifying other Drake records: Not to be lost among Drake’s historic week on the Hot 100 are other records that he either breaks or extends.
Drake pads his record total to 54 Hot 100 top 10s. Here is an updated look at the acts with the most top 10 Hot 100 hits (dating to the chart’s Aug. 4, 1958, inception):
54, Drake
38, Madonna
34, The Beatles
31, Rihanna
30, Michael Jackson
29, Taylor Swift
28, Mariah Carey
28, Stevie Wonder
27, Janet Jackson
27, Elton John
With his nine latest entrances, Drake also swells his record total to 39 career debuts in the Hot 100’s top 10.
Drake further extends his records to 140 top 40 Hot 100 hits, as all 21 songs on Certified Lover Boy debut in the region, and 258 entries on the chart overall.
Additionally, Drake, from Toronto, passes Bieber (nine to eight) for the most No. 1s among Canadians over the Hot 100’s history, a leaderboard that has been transformed in recent years, thanks to the pair and, in third place, The Weeknd (six).
JAY-Z’s 22nd top 10: Among other acts upping their top 10 counts on the Hot 100 via features on new Drake entries, JAY-Z collects his 22nd top 10, as “Love All” debuts at No. 10. It’s JAY-Z’s first top 10 since his featured turn on wife Beyoncé’s “Drunk in Love,” which hit No. 2 in February 2014.
JAY-Z now boasts Hot 100 top 10s in the 1990s (dating to his first, as featured on Foxy Brown’s No. 7-peaking “I’ll Be” in 1997), 2000s, ’10s and ’20s. He joins Mariah Carey as the only acts to rank in the top 10 in each of the last four decades, with the pair sharing a No. 1: Carey’s “Heartbreaker,” on which he’s featured, led for two weeks in October 1999, becoming his first of four No. 1s. (Carey reached the milestone thanks to the annual resurgence of “All I Want for Christmas Is You.”)
Plus, here are updated Hot 100 top 10 totals for other acts thanks to their features on Drake’s newest top 10s: Travis Scott (10); Lil Baby (eight); 21 Savage (five); Giveon, Lil Durk (two each); and Project Pat (one; after two prior Hot 100 entries in 2001 and 2008).
Drake extends R&B/hip-hop No. 1 record: “Way 2 Sexy” concurrently launches at No. 1 on on the multi-metric Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart (which uses the same methodology as the Hot 100), as Drake achieves his record-extending 23rd leader. (Aretha Franklin and Stevie Wonder share the second-most No. 1s in the chart’s history, which also dates to 1958 as an all-encompassing genre songs survey, with 20 each.)
The track likewise debuts atop the multi-metric Hot Rap Songs chart, where it’s also Drake’s record-padding 23rd No. 1.
Meanwhile …: At No. 6 on the April 4, 1964-dated Hot 100 was Terry Stafford’s “Suspicion,” below the all-Beatles top five that week.
Similarly beneath Drake’s top five domination this week, The Kid LAROI and Bieber’s “Stay” ranks at No. 6, down from No. 2 after four weeks at No. 1 (Aug. 14-Sept. 4). The song (on Raymond Braun/Columbia Records/Def Jam) drew 76.3 million radio airplay audience impressions (up 7%) and 27.7 million streams (down 8%) and sold 12,100 downloads (down 9%) in the tracking week.
(In another achievement for Canada this week, at least one Canadian artist ranks in each of the top 10 positions on the latest Hot 100, with Drake at Nos. 1-5 and 7-10 and Bieber at No. 6. Also notably, no song in the tier has spent double-digit weeks on the chart: Drake debuts nine songs and “Stay” logs its ninth week on the chart.)
As for the week’s top song in each metric measured for the Hot 100, “Way 2 Sexy” debuts atop the Streaming Songs chart, where it’s Drake’s record-extending 11th No. 1, Young Thug’s second and Future’s first; Ed Sheeran’s “Bad Habits” leads Radio Songs for a second week (76.4 million, up 1%); and BTS’ “Butter” tops Digital Song Sales for a 15th frame (84,500, down 41%).
On the Hot 100, “Bad Habits” drops from No. 3 to No. 13, after reaching No. 2, and “Butter” falls 1-17. A week earlier, the latter rebounded for its 10th week at No. 1, sparked by its remix featuring Megan Thee Stallion.
Again, for all chart news, you can follow @billboard and @billboardcharts on both Twitter and Instagram and all charts (dated Sept. 18), including the Hot 100 in its entirety, will refresh on Billboard.com tomorrow (Sept. 14).
