RS Charts: Drake Stays Number One on Artists 500 as Big Sean Surges

Drake secured yet another week at the top of the Rolling Stone Artists 500 chart, pulling in 118.1 million song streams for the week of September 4th through 10th.

Once again, the rapper’s latest single, “Laugh Now Cry Later,” featuring Lil Durk, anchored his always reliable streaming numbers. The track held at Number Two on the Top 100 Songs chart, pulling in 23 million streams to move an equivalent 182,400 song units.

Coming in behind Drake once more were Pop Smoke and Juice World, who picked up 110.4 million and 102.7 million song streams, respectively. Their posthumous albums, Shoot for the Stars Aim for the Moon and Legends Never Die, also held the Two and Three spots on the Top 200 Albums chart.

Shaking up the chart this week, however, was Big Sean, who flew from Number 83 to Number Four as his new album, Detroit 2, debuted at Number One on the RS200. Big Sean pulled in 88.8 million song streams, with the bulk of that coming from Detroit 2’s 80.6 million song streams. That, combined with 30,300 album sales, helped the rapper’s latest LP move 97,400 album-equivalent units.

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.

Aside from Big Sean, the biggest moves on the Artists 500 chart happened outside the Top 10. Tekashi 6ix9ine jumped from Number 225 with 10.1 million streams to Number 68 with 21.3 million streams following the release of his album, TattleTales, which debuted at Number Four on the RS200, moving 51,700 album-equivalent units. And the Rolling Stones saw a decent bump of their own, going from Number 123 with 14.9 million streams to Number 99 with 17.1 million streams after their Goats Head Soup reissue debuted at Number 14 on the RS200.