Drake's 'Certified Lover Boy' Beats All 2021 Rap Albums To Double Platinum Status
There’s no doubting Drake‘s status as a Hip Hop sales king with all the units he’s moved throughout his career. The 6 God’s latest album Certified Lover Boy has only added to his already-impressive tally.
On Thursday (January 6), Chart Data announced that Certified Lover Boy has sold over two million total units in the United States, making it eligible for double platinum certification.
CLB is Drake’s sixth consecutive multi-platinum album, but more importantly, it’s the first and only rap album from 2021 to reach double platinum status.
.@Drake's 'Certified Lover Boy' has now sold over 2 million total units in the US. It's the only 2021 rap album to reach this milestone
— chart data (@chartdata) January 6, 2022
Drake faced stiff competition in last year’s sales race from Kanye West’s Donda, J. Cole’s The Off-Season, Lil Nas X’s MONTERO, Moneybagg Yo’s A Gangsta’s Pain and Polo G’s Hall of Fame, to name just a few. But the 6 God’s performance in the fourth quarter proved too much to overcome.
Drake unleashed Certified Lover Boy on September 3, and it debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart, moving 613,000 album-equivalent units in its first week. It raced to platinum status in just three weeks.
CLB ranked as the best-selling rap album of 2021 with 1.970 million total sales, according to Billboard, and is nominated for Best Rap Album at the 2022 Grammy Awards (which were due to go ahead on January 31, but have since been postponed due to COVID-19).
The top 10 albums of 2021 in the U.S., by total equivalent album units, according to MRC Data (1/2):
1. @MorganWallen Dangerous: The Double Album (3.226 million)
2. @oliviarodrigo Sour (2.856 million)
3. @Drake Certified Lover Boy (1.970 million)
4. @Adele 30 (1.936 million)— billboard charts (@billboardcharts) January 6, 2022
Things aren’t all peachy for Drake, though. The Toronto native is set to appear on the late Aaliyah’s upcoming posthumous album Unstoppable, but fans are upset about it. The male-heavy guest list — which also includes Future, Snoop Dogg, Chris Brown, The Weeknd and Ne-Yo — has prompted backlash from devoted Aaliyah fans.
“Imagine having the opp to create a new Aaliyah album with an entire generation of women that were directly influenced (Ciara, Teyana, Tinashe, Normani, Jhene, CxH, H.E.R., Sevyn, etc.),” one fan vented on Twitter. “But instead we get Snoop Dogg, Neyo, Future, CB, a weird Weeknd song…yikes.”
Revisit Certified Lover Boy below.