10 Reasons Drake Will Sell a Million Copies This Week

Image via Complex Original

"Started From the Bottom" hit No. 6 on the Billboard's Hot 100 singles chart at the end of February. "Hold On, We're Going Home" is at No. 9 this week.

When Kanye West flew up to Toronto this summer and joined Drake onstage at the OVO Fest, it read like a coronation. As if Kanye was saying, "All right, man. I'm going left. Jay is a year younger than Kool G Rap. Lil Wayne is on the wane. The lane is open. The pole position. It's all yours."

Do you think it was a mistake, Drake choosing an owl for his logo, his power animal? You don't think it might have something to do with enticing 30-gazillion crazed Harry Potter fans—the kids who go all bonker's for Harry's winged, mail-delivering familiar, Hedwig? The kids who have now aged perfectly into the dead center of the 18-26-year-old record-buying demographic sweet spot? Come now, you know Drake better than that.

The story has written itself over the summer. Drake is about to take over the world. The next episode will come with Kendrick's next solo album: Can he wrest the crown from the new king's clutches?

Check the stats. Drake's got social media on lock. How many people are on Facebook again, how many on Twitter? Because Drake's got 30,755,484 of the former and 12,333,270 of the latter, as of press time.

You know what even kinda sounds like Drake featuring Drake? "Holy Grail."

His last album, Take Care, came out two years ago and sold 631,000 copies it's first week. A careful scientific analysis of the success Drake's has found on his guest appearances on other artists' hits since then—songs like "Stay Schemin'," "No Lie," "Pop That," "Fuckin' Problems" and "No New Friends"—reveals that his collaborative efforts have gained him precicely 369,000 new, record-buying fans.

Have you listened to the radio much lately, like xoomed around from station to station on a long car drive or something? It's a surreal, and extremely divergent experience. On the one hand, you've got Lady Gaga and Zedd and flying through the stars on their techno-blip synthesizer spaceships and dudes like Future and Rich Homie Quan warping out their voices with autotune til they sound like crazy underwater robots from a Jetson's-syle future-world. The all that 1940's stomp-around-the-campfire banjo folk from the Mumfords and ther Lumineers and all their mustacheod, suspenders-wearing friends. The you got Daft Punk and Robin Thicke pretending to be stepping their platform heels and flares into the Paladium in 1978. And Eminem: wearing a Kangol and tacksuit, blasting Rick-Rubin beats out of his vintage Helix boombox like it's 1985 again.

But there has been one song lately, that sounds distinctly, perfectly of the now. With its soft, warm key chords balancing the cold slap of it's live drums and chilled-out rythmic track, and Drake crooning soft and sad and sweet, leading you out to the car, "Hold On, We're Going Home," is 2013 sonically personified.

Drake's uncle Larry's Band Graham Central Station's third album, released in 1975, was called Ain't No 'Bout-A-Doubt It. That album includes a cover of Ann Peeble's 1973 classic "I Can't Stand the Rain"—a song which, on the original recording, features Drake's OTHER uncle, Mabon "Teenie" Hodges, on the guitar. 'Boutlessly, this is a sign.

"I think I'm selling a million first week, man, I guess I'm an optomist," said Drake on his megahit remix of Migos' "Versace." Hearing the confidence in his flow, keeping in mind how many of his dreams he's achieved in the five short years since he came on the scene, is it wise to doubt him?