Special Sales Report: Drake’s “Thank Me Later” Debuts at #1

I could do a usual sales report, but let's not kid ourselves, all anyone wants to know is how Drake's "Thank Me Later" did. First week sales of "Thank Me Later' have become transcendent. People who normally don't give a crap about album sales are suddenly discussing it like expert music industry insiders, so I thought we'd do a special edition devoted entirely to Drizzy. After all, nothing less than the fate of the entire music industry depends on Drake's numbers. (Hope the sarcasm came across there.)

First, the facts. Sorry everyone hoping Drake would go down in flames but "Thank Me Later" debuted at #1 and sold an impressive 447,000 copies. Of course that numbers doesn't mean anything without some perspective, so let me put it in context. Long story short, that's really, really f**king good, but not legendary good. Not top-shelf elite good. Not "the savior of hip-hop" good.

"Thanks Me Later" is the third biggest album debut of the year so far, behind only Sade's "Soldier of Love" and country group Lady Antebellum's "Need You Now". But considering that labels save their biggest releases for the holiday season, it's probably more helpful to compare the album to 2009's numbers. If Drake were have to released his debut album in '09, his first week sales would have put him behind Taylor Swift's "Fearless", Susan Boyle's "Dream a Little Dream", Michael's Jackson's "Number Ones", Lady Gaga's "The Frame", the soundtrack to "Hannah Montana: The Movie," and the Black Eyed Pea's "E.N.D.". In other words, Drake's popular, but he's not "mainstream white America loves him" popular.

Now hip-hop sales are lower than other genres across the board, so it's even more useful to compare sales to '09's hip-hop albums. Notably both Eminem's "Recovery" and Jay's "Blueprint 3" did better first week numbers, but other than that there weren't a lot of albums that could have touched "Thank Me Later". In fact, it's worth noting that he absolutely crushed 50 Cent's numbers for "Before I Self Destruct", which similarly leaked. And I also think it's worth pointing out that Drizzy can't yet even dream of matching his mentor Lil Wayne, who's the last artist to top one-million albums in a single week for "Tha Carter III".

While it's fun to speculate on early numbers, the true test will come in the next six months. We've seen albums (like Chris Brown's "Graffiti") debut strongly off the hype alone and then plummet down the charts, while we've also see albums continue to hang around, experience a resurgence and stockpile massive numbers over the course of a year (see the aforementioned double platinum "E.N.D."). Sorry folks, but we're just gonna have to wait.

So where does that leave us? Right about where we were before "Thank Me Later" dropped. As I think we all intuitively knew anyway, Drake's numbers put him in the upper-middle class in terms of commercially successful rappers. He's miles ahead of your average rappers, who'd be ecstatic to even top 100,000 in a week, but he's not yet in that upper echelon of game changers, which makes perfect sense. After all, this is only his debut. No one knows what awaits Drake, but unless he develops DMX's crack habit, the future's looking bright for Aubrey Graham.