Drake has been up to some of his favorite things lately: being rich, hanging out with Nicki Minaj, and breaking records on the charts. The rapper just charted his 30th top-five single, besting a record previously set by the Beatles (and it’s far from his first time). The song to do it? “Staying Alive,” DJ Khaled’s Bee Gees–interpolating song with Drake and Lil Baby, which effortlessly debuted at No. 5 on “The Hot 100” on Monday, August 15. Leave it to Khaled to sneak his way into music history. With “Staying Alive,” Drake broke his tie with the Beatles, who logged 29 songs in the top five of “The Hot 100.” (He already has top-ten hits in the bag with 59, over 20 more than second-place finisher Madonna’s 38.)
But don’t go off right away about how the Beatles are sooo much better than Drake. It’s worth noting that Drake bested this record largely thanks to the advent of streaming, which has allowed him to chart full albums on “The Hot 100” regularly. Look at last year’s Certified Lover Boy, which dominated nine out of ten spots on the top ten (including the entire top five) and tied a Beatles record. Before that, Drake charted seven songs in the top ten with Scorpion, which broke the Beatles’ previous record of five songs in the top five. Those alone account for over half of all of Drake’s top-fives. To be fair, charting a whole album in the Top 40 is still a major accomplishment in the streaming era, but it’s a completely different game than what the Beatles were doing at their time. More accurately, they charted 29 singles in the top five — that is, 29 songs that each climbed to the top individually thanks to sales and radio play. (“The Hot 100” didn’t even allow non-singles to chart until December 1998.) Drake is clearly doing more than just “staying alive” on the charts. Think he’ll get another tattoo for this one?
