Drake and 21 Savage rise in the charts and controversy

Sara Dimitrijevic ’25, Staff Writer

Drake and 21 Savage’s album is now the third most popular number one album on the Billboard 200 chart, with “Her Loss” being his 12th chart-topper. Per Billboard, “Her Loss” earned 404,000 equivalent album units, which equals 513.56 million on demand streams of the set’s tracks. It’s the fourth-largest streaming week of all time for any album. (Variety 2022).

Throughout the songs, you hear how well Drake and 21 Savage compliment each other. The album was already expected to be a major hit and sell out despite barely being advertised, and its certainly achieved that. “Her Loss” is not the first album rappers 21 Savage and Drake have worked on– they’ve given us big hits before and have managed to continuously show people what a great duo they are. This album also has a feature from Travis Scott.

Although the album has many hits and has grown in popularity, it has also caused some controversy on social media. In a song, Drake threw some shade to Megan Thee Stallion, causing massive outrage amongst her fans. Drake accused her of lying in a case where Megan Thee Stallion sued Tory Lanez for shooting her in the foot. The general public will not know the answers to this case until trial. Although this social media uproar occurred, it has died down since fans were not pleased.

There has also been controversy on what the album cover means, or the deeper meaning behind it. The photo was taken by a photographer named Paris Aden, who shot the photo 3 years ago. Drake had only just recently discovered it. The name of the girl in the album cover photo is Qui Yasuka, aka Suki Baby. Someone from OVO recently reached out about using the pic as a cover. Many people on TikTok have speculated that there is a deeper meaning behind the album cover, and have actually gone to hating on Qui Yasuka.

Although “Her Loss” has caused a bit of controversy, 21 Savage and Drake have an amazing flow when creating these songs, and including Travis Scott to the song was another good feature. Overall, the album doesn’t disappoint.