Although Kanye West‘s attention appears to have turned to cultivating a new identity, expanding his Yeezy empire into new arenas and buying up property amid his divorce from Kim Kardashian in recent weeks, his Donda album continues to reach new milestones.
On Monday (October 25), Spotify announced on Twitter that Ye’s latest project has surpassed one billion streams on the platform. According to Chart Data, it’s Kanye’s fastest album to reach the billion-streams mark.
That isn’t too surprising considering 2016’s The Life of Pablo was initially released as a TIDAL exclusive, while 2018’s ye and 2019’s Jesus Is King arrived to smaller fanfare compared to the stadium-status rollout of Pablo and Donda.
Donda was released by surprise on August 29 following weeks of stadium-hosted listening sessions, missed release dates and tracklist tweaks. On its first day, the album scored the biggest debut of 2021 on both Spotify and Apple Music with 94 million and 60 million streams, respectively.
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The 27-song effort debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 — earning Kanye West his tenth chart-topping album — before going gold less than a month later.
However, Donda was quickly overshadowed by his nemesis Drake‘s own blockbuster release Certified Lover Boy, which arrived just days later on September 3.
Certified Lover Boysmashed Donda‘s first-day streaming records, racking up over 150 million streams in its first 24 hours on Spotify alone — a new all-time record. The album has since spent four nonconsecutive weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 while racing to platinum status.
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What might further dampen Kanye West‘s Donda success is the fact that Certified Lover Boy surpassed one billion Spotify streams in roughly half the time. Drake’s sixth studio album reached the milestone on October 2, less than a month after its release.
It’s unclear what CLB‘s current total streaming tally is, but there’s a chance it could crack two billion streams by the end of the year.
A streaming competition looks unlikely to reignite Kanye West and Drake’s cold war, which exploded this past summer in the run-up to their respective albums. The former Calabasas neighbors not only sparred on wax, but Kanye doxxed Drake and spammed his hometown of Toronto with Donda billboards, while Drizzy leaked an unreleased André 3000 collaboration from Ye’s vaults.
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Although things have cooled down since then, Drake did unfollow Kanye West on Instagram earlier this month, proving there’s no end to the pettiness in this beef.
