Lil Baby earns his first solo No. 1 (without any other acts) on Billboard’s Hot Rap Songs chart as “California Breeze” debuts at the summit of the chart dated Oct. 29. The track comes from his new album, It’s Only Me, which likewise enters at No. 1 on the Top Rap Albums chart, as well as the all-genre Billboard 200.
“Breeze” blows away the competition thanks to its 23.1 million official U.S. streams registered in the week ending Oct. 20, according to Luminate. The count yields a No. 1 start on the Rap Streaming Songs chart and No. 2 entrance on the overall Streaming Songs chart, behind only Sam Smith and Kim Petras’ “Unholy.”
The chart-topping debut gives Lil Baby his third leader on the Hot Rap Songs chart, all of which have come in 2022. He first claimed a No. 1 via “Do We Have a Problem?,” with Nicki Minaj, for one week in February, and returned to the penthouse in August when he and Drake featured on DJ Khaled’s “Staying Alive,” another one-week champ. Notably, all three of his No. 1s have debuted in the top slot.
As noted, “Breeze” appears on Lil Baby’s new album, It’s Only Me, which starts at No. 1 on the Billboard 200, Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums and Top Rap Albums charts. The set earned 216,000 equivalent album units in its debut week (Oct. 14-20), the best opening-week figure of the rapper’s career. Of the sum, 209,000 units derive from streaming – equal to 289 million official on-demand streams of the album’s songs. (One unit equals the following levels of consumption: one album sale, 10 individual tracks sold from an album, or 3,750 ad-supported or 1,250 paid/subscription on-demand official audio and video streams for a song on the album.)
Elsewhere, “Breeze” begins at No. 2 on the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs and at No. 4 on the all-genre Billboard Hot 100.
The hit track is only one of a host of Lil Baby tracks that flood the charts amid the album’s release. The rapper sends seven tracks in the top 10 of Hot Rap Songs. Six are debuts – “California Breeze” (No. 1), “Forever,” featuring Fridayy (No. 2), “Real Spill” (No. 4), “Pop Out,” with Nardo Wick (No. 6), “Never Hating,” with Young Thug (No. 7) and “Stand on It” (No. 10) – while “Heyy” climbs 14-9 in its second week on the list.
On the Hot 100, Lil Baby posts 25 titles on the chart this week, 23 from It’s Only Me, “Staying Alive” and his 2017 release “Freestyle,” which has returned to the chart in the wake of viral streaming growth in recent weeks. Thanks to that mighty collection, Lil Baby becomes only the third act to have at least a quarter of the chart in one week, joining Drake and Taylor Swift.