Drake Holds Onto Number One on Artists 500 Chart

Drake easily held on to the Number One spot on the Rolling Stone Artists 500 chart for the week of June 5th through June 11th.

The Toronto rapper picked up 126.2 million song streams, led once again by his latest release, Dark Lane Demo Tapes, which landed at Number Six on the Top 200 Albums chart with 46.4 million streams to help it move 38,700 album-equivalent units. His single “Toosie Slide” also landed at Number Six on the Top 100 Songs chart, picking up 13.1 million streams, while his collaboration with Future, “Life is Good” landed at Number 14 with 10.7 million streams.

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 ended the previous Thursday.

While the numbers show yet another characteristically strong streaming performance from Drake, there was never going to be much competition for Number One on the Artists 500 this week, as much of the music industry observed Blackout Tuesday, June 2nd. As part of an attempt to show solidarity with the Black Lives Matter protests spurred by the police killing of George Floyd, few new singles were released and labels postponed the June 5th release dates of several new albums, leading to a fairly quiet week on all the charts.

As such, the rest of the Top 10 of the Artists 500 featured plenty of familiar faces. DaBaby held tight at Number Two, racking up 78.4 million streams as his latest single with Roddy Ricch, “Rockstar,” notched another week at Number One on the RS100. Post Malone landed at Number Three with 76.6 million streams, Lil Uzi Vert claimed Number Four with 75.2 million streams and Lil Baby jumped from Number Eight to Number Five with 73.8 million streams as his latest album, My Turn, made an impressive return to Number One on the RS200 15 weeks after its February release.

To round out the Top 10 of the RS 500, Future landed at Number Six with 73.1 million streams, Youngboy Never Broke Again fell at Seven with 71.7 million streams, the Weeknd took Number Eight with 67.3 million streams, Gunna placed ninth with 61.2 million streams and Juice WRLD capped things off at 10 with 60.9 million streams.