The March 20 update to the Billboard Hot 100 brought with it two major pieces of news. The first was that Olivia Rodrigo’s “drivers license” came down from the top after spending eight weeks in first place. Second, now Drake had taken the spot. And second and third place? Also Drake. On March 5, he released his EP Scary Hours 2, which features three songs total: “What’s Next,” “Wants and Needs,” and “Lemon Pepper Freestyle.” In the same order as on the EP, these three songs debuted at number one, two and three on the Billboard chart. This was actually a deliberate choice on Drake’s part.

This is only the third time one artist has monopolized the top three positions of the Hot 100, first achieved by the Beatles in 1964 and later by Ariana Grande in 2019. The difference is that Drake’s charting songs are all new, and this is a first. In the past, there were only two instances of the first and second places being new songs, but in each case the two songs were by different artists. With “Leave the Door Open,” the latest song from Bruno Mars and Anderson .Paak’s supergroup Silk Sonic, charting at number four, the top four slots are all new releases—another first, of course.

Needless to say, the driving force behind this new record was streaming. Drake’s three new songs garnered 49, 42 and 32 million streams respectively, significantly higher than those further down on the list. But this isn’t unfamiliar territory. His 2018 album Scorpion racked up more than 740 million streams in its first week, shattering the all-time record by a wide margin. With all 25 tracks from Scorpion, plus two others not from the album, he had a grand total of 27 songs charting simultaneously. Seven of the top ten spots belonged to Drake, including first, second and forth. His latest accomplishment is different, however, as in his 2018 lineup the song “Nice for What” had already been number one for eight weeks.

If you look back six months before the release of Scorpion, you can see why naming his latest EP Scary Hours 2 is so significant. Back in January of 2018, Drake put out a two-song EP called Scary Hours. The first track was the hit single, “God’s Plan,” which went on to become the lead single for Scorpion as well as the number one song on the Year-End Hot 100 chart. Meanwhile, Drake is currently getting ready to release a new album, Certified Lover Boy, which had been anticipating a January release before being postponed; at the moment, the album has no set release date.

There’s also something about Scary Hours 2 itself that’s interesting. The EP, released in the lead-up to his new album, looks like a test strategy for tackling the Hot 100 that only Drake could pull off. One of the big pushes behind Scorpion’s colossal streaming success was that it had 25 tracks. An album with too many tracks would have physically been a burden during the era of records, but in the streaming generation it forms the basic strategy for maximizing the streams that support album performance; Scorpion is one album that actively pioneered this approach. By contrast, Scary Hours 2 seems to ask what would happen when you restrict the number of tracks. The various streaming services advertise Scary Hours 2 like they would an album and include its three tracks in major playlists, in particular those playlists focused on new songs. While the three-song EP can’t chart on the Billboard 200, it’s still a historic record for the Hot 100. In fact, many experts suspect that, had the album contained more tracks, it would have had a hard time capturing the chart’s top three spots.

TRIVIA

Definition of an album
The Hot 100 looks at individual songs; the Billboard 200 tracks albums. So what if three tracks are bundled together under one name as they are on Scary Hours 2? There are slight differences between music sales and streaming sites when it comes to classifying singles and EPs, but the way they define an album is the same: at least seven songs, or longer than 30 minutes.