Drake’s ‘If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late’ Might Sell 500K Units This Weekend

According to the newest estimates from Hits Daily Double, Drake's new surprise album, If You're Reading This It's Too Late, could see somewhere in the neighborhood of 500,000 units over the weekend. For reference, the biggest opening week a rap album enjoyed in 2014 was J. Cole's 2014 Forest Hills Drive, which moved some 371,000 unites. Cole's third album was followed by Nicki Minaj's The Pinkprint, which sold approximately 244,000 copies. Drake's last album, 2013's Nothing Was The Same, was in the 650,000 range, coming in second that year to the recent Best Rap Album Grammy winner, Eminem's The Marshall Mathers LP 2, which clocked in just shy of 800,000. Nothing Was The Same had a bigger first week than the 2013 albums from Kanye West, Jay Z, Cole and Aubrey's mentor, Lil Wayne.

There are very few artists who can command national attention with no advance warning. Yesterday (Feb. 12), Drake proved that he is on a short list of rappers who can not only stop the hip-hop world in its tracks, but approaches those mythical monoculture levels of commercial dominance. With Kanye West pulling eyes and Twitter feeds toward Manhattan, as he debuted not just his new Adidas shoes, not just an entire clothing line, but the intro from his still-untitled 7th solo LP, Drake snatched back the evening. If You're Reading This has been referred to by Drake as a mixtape, but was made available for purchase and features entirely original production.

Filed Under: Drake, if you're reading this it's too late

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