Drake Breaks His Record for Most Annual Spotify Streams for a Rapper

After garnering over 17.6 billion Spotify streams in 2025, Canadian megastar Drake slightly broke the record he set in 2023 for the most streams by a rapper in a single year.

This feat is a statement of his nearly two-decade dominance in hip hop, during which he has reinforced his position as one of the most successful musicians of the 21st century.

Following Drake’s viral conflict with Kendrick Lamar in 2024, fans were curious to see how the Canadian star would bounce back, especially commercially, since his reputation faced a period of intense focus.

The OVO boss’s first strategic move was the release of a joint album with long-term associate PartyNextDoor. The project, ‘$ome $exy $ongs 4 U,’ was an R&B and Hip Hop-fused twenty-one-track album released on Valentine’s Day with themed marketing across America, Canada, and the UK.

The album spawned the viral dance hit ‘Nokia,’ which was one of the songs of the summer and has accumulated over 500 million Spotify streams.

Drake also released new singles. ‘What Did I Miss,’ where he took shots at his opponents, ‘Which One’ featuring UK rapper Central Cee, and ‘Dog House’ featuring Julia Wolf and Yeat, all while preparing for his next album, rumoured to be titled ‘Ice Man.’

His 2025 releases, coupled with his massive catalogue, combined to make him Spotify’s fourth most-streamed artist of the year globally and the second in the US.

Breaking records is nothing new for Drake, who is the most-streamed artist of all time on Spotify. The streaming platform has been a major thumping ground for him, as he has 24 songs with over 1 billion streams, which puts him just behind fellow Canadian star The Weeknd with 29.

Drake is also the first artist in history to reach 500 million RIAA certification units, as well as the most RIAA-certified Diamond records with 15, 6 more than Post Malone, who is second on the list.

Among other landmark feats recorded by Drake in the United States are his 13 NO. 1 hits, which equalled Michael Jackson's record as the male solo artist with the most NO. 1 song on Billboard Hot 100.

Drake’s 2025 success is a testament to his longevity as a star who has evolved with the soundscape and taken his artistry on intercontinental explorations of Afrobeats, Dancehall, Reggaeton, and Grime. Even when it appeared that his powers might have been checkmated after a famous conflict, his hit-making abilities stayed intact and saw him take the Apple Music crown in 2025.

For an artist who possesses one of the most commercially successful catalogues in the streaming era and several records under his belt, Drake’s consistent desire to put out new material means that come 2026, he might very well break this Spotify record again.