That Elusive Chart Feat Drake Hasn’t Attained, Thanks to Taylor, SZA, Ella, and Others
(May 25, 2026) – For all of Drake’s accomplishments on the charts — and there are many, including this week’s historic feat with all three of his new albums occupying the top three slots on the Billboard 200 — there is one metric that has eluded him, despite his many Herculean attempts: total domination of the top ten on the singles chart.
Eight years ago, the “God’s Plan” rapper became the first artist to simultaneously occupy at least seven Hot 100 spots with songs from 2018’s Scorpion.
Then in 2021, upon the debut of Certified Lover Boy, Drizzy matched the Beatles’ feat of simultaneously occupying the top five Hot 100 positions, a record they’d held solely for 57 years since their April 1964 domination during early Beatlemania. Drake additionally held positions 7 through 12 as well as many other chart slots that week. It was the first time anyone had owned as many as nine of the top ten songs in a single week.
The lone obstacle then was at No. 6: “Stay” by The Kid Laroi and Justin Bieber. That blockout gave additional context to Drake’s aptly titled No. 11 tune that week, “No Friends in the Industry,” which would’ve completed a total top ten takeover for the Canadian rapper were it not for the Laroi/Bieber tune.
A year later, in November 2022, Drake’s Her Loss created a Hot 100 blitz with eight of the top ten tunes occupying positions 2 through 9. The holdouts that week were Taylor Swift’s “Anti-Hero” at No. 1 and Sam Smith’s “Unholy,” a duet with Kim Petras at No. 10. Swift’s tune was especially poetic as she’d become the first artist to occupy all ten of the top spots earlier that month with songs from her Midnights album, including “Anti-Hero.”
Her Loss (more accurately, his loss) was even famously delayed a week to accommodate Taylor’s LP, which Drake later admitted on the companion EP to his followup album For All the Dogs, but to no avail.
When For All the Dogs debuted in October 2023, Drake’s songs once again occupied seven of the top ten spots on the Hot 100, with the three exceptions being songs by Doja Cat, SZA, and (once again) Taylor whose “Cruel Summer” was proving to be an especially cruel late-summer roadblock for Drizzy, who otherwise had 23 songs in the top half of the chart that week.
The beef-embattled rapper’s next release — the PartyNextDoor collaboration $ome $exy $ongs 4 U — didn’t fare as well, placing only two songs in the top ten upon its chart debut in early March 2025. But that notably came during Drake’s down period after suffering a TKO against Kendrick Lamar during their historic clash the year before. And in Drizzy’s defense, $exy $ongs wasn’t a solo release and it certainly wasn’t as hyped as this month’s new albums.
Meanwhile, during the two-year Drake break, Taylor tacked on two more albums whose songs occupied all ten of the top positions on the Hot 100 — The Tortured Poets Department (top 14 in 2024), and The Life of a Showgirl (top 12 in 2025) — making her still the only act to have owned the entire top ten in a single week and the only one to have done it three times.
The irony is that Drake may actually be too prolific for his own good. His streaming-era strategy floods the market with content, often spreading listeners across dozens of tracks at once. Taylor Swift’s all-top-ten takeovers, by contrast, were fueled not just by streaming but by concentrated cultural moments where one album became unavoidable across radio, social media, retail, and fan engagement simultaneously. Drake can overwhelm the charts, but he hasn’t quite managed to out-maneuver radio-driven hits from pop, country, and crossover acts that continue to occupy valuable top-ten real estate.
Still, one would think that a much-hyped “comeback” album that turned out to be not one but three albums containing 43 tracks would be enough to do the trick, right?
Wrong.
Drake’s takeover of the Hot 100 this week is historic — forty-two of the 43 songs from Iceman, Habibti, and Maid of Honour dot this week’s chart, the most ever by any artist. But once again, only nine of them place in the top ten as yet another female prevented Drake’s total domination. That singer is Ella Langley, whose “Choosin’ Texas” — buoyed by its enduring radio presence — falls from No. 1 to No. 5, retaining its upper echelon status and holding Drake at bay once more.
That makes four times since Drake set the record in 2018 for having the most top tens in a single week that he’s fallen just short of achieving the complete top ten takeover, while Taylor Swift has accomplished that feat three times. One has to wonder if this will ever happen for the Canadian rapper who is clearly enamored with chart statistics, especially his own.
But don’t count Drake out yet. No artist has mastered the streaming-era flood quite like him, and history suggests he’ll try again — perhaps with even more music next time. As long as streaming remains the dominant force behind chart performance, a full Drake top-ten takeover still feels less like an impossibility than an inevitability waiting for the right week… assuming Taylor, SZA, Ella, or some other chart spoiler isn’t standing in the way again.
DJRob
DJRob (he/him) is a freelance music blogger from the East Coast who covers R&B, hip-hop, disco, pop, rock and country genres – plus lots of music news and current stuff! You can follow him on Bluesky at @djrobblog.bsky.social, X (formerly Twitter) at @djrobblog, on Facebook or on Meta’s Threads.
You can also register for free by selecting the menu bars above to receive notifications of future articles.