Drake may miss out on the top spot of Billboard‘s album chart for the first time in a decade thanks to a surprising competitor for the No. 1 spot. While Drake’s albums generally outsell the competition by a large margin — especially after Billboard changed its rules in order to count streams — his latest release, the surprise mixtape Dark Lane Demo Tapes, is reportedly locked into a neck-and-neck race for No. 1 with country legend Kenny Chesney’s Here And Now, according to Hits Daily Double.
The insider trade magazine reports that Drake’s tape is ahead on streaming, enough to amount to 230-255k equivalent units, while Chesney’s ticket bundle has him close enough to touch Drake’s totals at 220-235k units. Drake’s first-place finish would likely be contingent on fans continuing to stream his project at rates consistent with his last few projects. While Dark Lane‘s numbers are impressive for an album that released with no real promotion, Drake’s become accustomed to living at the top of the charts.
If Dark Lane Demo Tapes misses out on No. 1, it would be the first of his full-length projects to miss ever; his highly anticipated debut album Thank Me Later debuted at No. 1 in 2010, followed by a string of No. 1 debuts that continued all the way up to his most recent drop, 2019’s Care Package, which was also a collection of B-Sides and previously released singles that arrived with little-to-know promotion.
It remains to be seen whether Drake will ask fans for a last-minute push the way his countryman Justin Bieber did during the competition between his “Yummy” and Roddy Ricch’s “The Box,” but Drake may have little to worry about anyway. Within hours of releasing Dark Lane Demo Tapes, Drake had already begun teasing another full-length release — this time a proper album — for later this year.
Dark Lane Demo Tapes is out now on OVO Sound/RCA Records.