Drake’s ‘HABIBTI’ gives him a record 18th No. 1 on Billboard’s R&B/hip-hop albums chart

Drake moved into sole possession of the record for the most No. 1 albums in the history of Billboard’s Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart when ‘HABIBTI’ reached the top of the ranking dated October 17. The result, first published October 13, gave him an 18th leader and ended the three-way tie he had shared with Future and the Temptations, who each have 17.

The jump was dramatic. ‘HABIBTI’ rose from No. 35 to No. 1 after earning 71,000 equivalent album units in the United States during the October 2–8 tracking week, a 506 percent increase from the previous frame. Nearly 70,000 of those units came from streaming, according to the Luminate data reported with the chart. The same surge returned the album to No. 2 on the all-genre Billboard 200, up from No. 116.

How the ‘FOMO’ expansion created a second opening

That rebound followed the October 2 release of ‘HABIBTI (FOMO),’ an expanded version built around four songs heard in Drake’s September visual project ‘FOMO’: ‘Solar Eclipse,’ featuring Don Toliver; ‘Quebec’; ‘Cold Shoulder,’ featuring Don Toliver and Yebba; and ‘Classic Pt 2.’ Apple Music confirms the expansion’s October 2 release through OVO under exclusive license to Republic Records. The chart’s rules combine different editions of the same album, so the new activity remained attached to the original ‘HABIBTI’ entry.

The milestone closes a circle from the album’s unusual May debut. Drake released ‘ICEMAN,’ ‘HABIBTI’ and ‘MAID OF HONOUR’ together on May 15, and the three projects occupied the top three positions of the Billboard 200. ‘HABIBTI’ started at No. 2 there and on Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums because ‘ICEMAN’ was ahead of it. Five months later, the deluxe edition pushed ‘HABIBTI’ past its companion project and made Drake the first artist to replace himself at No. 1 on the genre-albums chart since Future and Metro Boomin did so in 2024.

Eighteen No. 1s across very different chart eras

The names behind the previous mark put Drake’s 18 in historical perspective. The Temptations accumulated their 17 leaders across the 1960s and 1970s, reaching that total with ‘A Song for You’ in 1975. Future matched the group in the streaming era. Drake now sits above both, with JAY-Z next at 14 and Ye at 13, according to the chart history published with the result.

Those totals are official, but they are not a clean comparison of audience size across generations. Billboard launched the chart in 1965, when purchases of physical records drove the ranking. Today its methodology blends album sales, track sales and streaming, while deluxe packages can renew activity without creating a separate chart entry. The Temptations’ vinyl-era run and Drake’s streaming-era run therefore measure dominance under different systems. The record is real; the path to it reflects the business model of its time.

A visual rollout becomes a streaming strategy

Drake’s own rollout made that modern path unusually visible. The ‘FOMO’ film arrived on YouTube on September 15 as a long-form visual featuring released music and previews of new material. Rather than treating that video as an endpoint, the campaign moved four songs from screen to streaming services two weeks later. The subsequent chart leap shows how a visual premiere, an expanded edition and an established catalog can work together to create a second commercial opening for an album months after launch.

Our read: the achievement is both a career statistic and a lesson in how attention is organized now. Drake’s longevity gave the expansion a massive audience, but the sequencing mattered—film first, official audio next, then a chart week that folded the new listening into the existing album. That does not diminish the music or the record. It explains why today’s biggest chart stories are increasingly about release architecture as well as songs, and why cross-era comparisons deserve more context than a single leaderboard can provide.