Drake’s latest project, Dark Lane Demo Tapes, has debuted at No. 2 on the Billboard 200, capping off a close race between his newest work and Kenny Chesney's new album, Here and Now, which finished in the top spot.
Drake’s project moved 223,000 equivalent album units, Billboard reports. Of those units, 201,000 were from streams, nearly 19,000 from album sales, and slightly under 4,000 were in track equivalent units.
Before Dark Lane Demo Tapes, Drake had achieved nine consecutive No. 1 debuts over the last decade. Here and Now pulled in 233,000 equivalent album units with 222,000 coming from album sales, and 10,000 in SEA units.
Drake told Lil Wayne on the latest episode of his Beats 1 show Young Money Radio, that he chose to piece together Dark Lane Demo Tapes because he wanted to give his fans a whole body of work, as opposed to releasing a single.
"We pieced a lot of those songs together and I put a few new joints on there, but really it was just instead of dropping a single right now," he recalled. "It's an interesting time for us all as musicians to figure out how this works and what people need. And I just felt like people would appreciate maybe a body of something to listen to as opposed to just one isolated song."
The confirmation of Dark Lane's arrival, which as Drake puts it, is the culmination of "some leaks and some joints from SoundCloud and some new vibes," came with the announcement that his sixth studio album would drop this summer.
His last project, 2019’s Care Package compilation project debuted at No. 1, pulling in 109,000 equivalent album units during its first week. His 2018 studio album, Scorpion, also topped the charts, opening at 732,000 units.
