J. Cole Tops the Artists 500 Chart for the First Time
J. Cole firmly planted himself atop the Rolling Stone Artists 500 chart for the first time following the release of his new album, The Off-Season.
The North Carolina rapper pulled in a staggering 343.7 million song streams for the week of May 14th through May 20th, the third highest weekly stream count in the chart’s history. The record holder remains Lil Uzi Vert who topped the chart in March 2020 with 396 million streams, while Post Malone hit Number One in 2019 with 381 million streams.
J. Cole’s new album,The Off-Season debuted at Number One on the Top 200 Albums chart as well, while tracks from the album accounted for eight of the top 10 spots on the Top 100 Songs chart. The highest charting song was “My.Life,” which picked up 36.4 million song streams to bow at Number One.
Top Artists
J. Cole
Drake
Taylor Swift
MoneyBagg Yo
Juice Wrld
The Rolling Stone Artists 500 chart ranks the most-streamed artists of the week in the United States, taking into account audio streams across an artist’s entire catalog during the tracking period. The chart does not include passive listening such as terrestrial radio or digital radio. The Artists 500 is updated daily, and each week Rolling Stone finalizes and publishes an official version of the chart, covering the seven-day period ending the previous Thursday.
Nicki Minaj also secured at Artists 500 first this week, cracking the Top 10 of the chart for the first time as she landed at Number Eight with 77.4 million song streams following the reissue of her breakout 2009 mixtape, Beam Me Up Scotty. The reissue contained a handful of new songs as well, including “Seeing Green” with Drake and Lil Wayne, which bowed at Number Nine on the RS100 with 17.8 million streams.
And Olivia Rodrigo got a major bump this week, leaping from Number 82 to Number 12 and bringing in 65.8 million song streams as her latest single, “Good 4 U” bowed at Number Two on the Top 100 Songs chart with 35 million streams. Rodrigo could challenge for the Number One spot on the Artists 500 next week when her debut album, Sour, hits the charts.
There were handful of milestones elsewhere on the chart: Both Pink and Alan Jackson notched their 100th weeks on the RS500, with the former reaching Number 94 with 21.2 million song streams and the latter hitting 108 with 19.4 million song streams. English singer Jorja Smith also scored her Artists 500 debut, landing at Number 470, while the Welsh act Marina and the Diamonds bowed on the chart for the first time at Number 496.
