Well, Drake’s got an album out. And although it would have swamped the chart if it weren’t for the three song rule, it doesn’t touch the top three. Instead, Doja Cat’s “Paint the Town Red” gets whacked by the downweighting rule in its tenth week out and drops straight out of the top 10, leaving the way clear for…

1. Kenya Grace – “Strangers”

This entered at number 20 last month and it’s been stuck in the top 3 for the last three weeks. It now adds Kenya Grace to the one-hit wonders club – one number one hit and nothing else, ever. Of course, that only really counts once you’ve missed with your follow-up, and her YouTube account is already on to promoting her next single.

The last five number ones have all been by solo female artists with no featured artists – the other four are Billie Eilish, Dua Lipa, Olivia Rodrigo and Doja Cat. That’s more a coincidence of timing than anything else, but it is very unusual – it’s the first time it’s happened, unless you’re willing to turn a blind eye to Colby Adonis’s credit on Lady Gaga’s “Let’s Dance”. (In which case, it happened in 2008/09 with Leona Lewis, Alexandra Burke, Lady Gaga, Lily Allen and Kelly Clarkson.)

4. Drake featuring J Cole – “First Person Shooter”
5. Drake featuring Yeat – “IDGAF”
6. Drake – “Virginia Beach”

The maximum three tracks from his album “For All The Dogs”, which enters as his sixth number one. That’s almost entirely on streaming – it’s not actually available in physical form, though a handful of freaks did buy downloads – and so it dutifully places its maximum three tracks right next to one another inside the top 10. Given that the album has 23 tracks, we can thank god for the 3-song limit.

Given how closely packed they are, it’s probably a bit random which tracks happened to make the top three, but we’ve got two with guest stars coupled with the first track from the album. There is actually a proper release week single from this album, with a video – “Another Late Night” – but it didn’t make the cut-off. Maybe next week.

Number 4 is J Cole’s highest ever chart position – his previous best was number 9 with Middle Child” in 2019. Yeat gets his first chart credit, with a track that apparently started life as one of his solo tracks in 2021, but hasn’t had an official release before showing up on this Drake album. I don’t get Drake’s appeal at all – the only thing in any of this that holds my attention is J Cole’s verse on “First Person Shooter”.

27. Lovejoy – “Normal People Things”

A second top 40 hit for Lovejoy after “Call Me What You Like” reached number 32 in the spring. They’re boosted by the fact that the lead singer is a Twitch streamer, but the records are decent in their own right.

28. Noah Kahan – “Stick Season”

This single came out a year ago, but it seems to have been reactivated by Olivia Rodrigo covering it for Radio 1. It’s Kahan’s second top 4 hit, after “Dial Drunk” reached number 32 earlier in the year. The parent album, also called “Stick Season”, re-enters the album chart at 28 (it peaked at 17 on release).

The Rodrigo version is quite good too – it’s a straight folk acoustic version.

35. Nines featuring Tunde & Mugzz – “I Do”
37. Nines featuring the Bad Boy Chiller Crew – “Toxic”

Two tracks from “Crop Circle 3”, his second album of the year, which enters at number 2 (matching its predecessor). Bold move to release in the same week as Drake, but it’s worked alright for him. The previous album did give him a top 10 single, though – “Tony Soprano 2”. Oddly, the “single” from this album was the “Daily Duppy” track he recorded for GRM Daily, which made number 20, and rebounds to 23 this week.

Both guests on “I Do” get their first hits. The appearance of Bad Boy Chiller Crew as guests on a regular rap album is unusual – they’re not regular collaborators as far as I can tell.

39. Jennie – “You & Me”

Solo single from the Blackpink member. All of the group have now reached solo singles – Jennie and Jisoo scraped the bottom end of the top 40, Rosé and Lisa both just missed it.

This week’s climbers:

• “Prada” by cässo featuring Raye & D-Block Europe climbs to 2 in its 7th week in the top 10. It still has a shot of making it to number 1. It has a proper video now, though not one featuring Raye or D-Block Europe – though it does have the editor doing everything in his power to jazz up some really uninteresting raw footage.
• “Water” by Tyla climbs 10-7.
• “Asking” by Sonny Fodera & MK featuring Clementine Douglas climbs 11-10 to enter the top 10.
• “My Love Mine All Mine” by Mitski climbs 15-13.
• “DNA (Loving You)” by Billy Gillies featuring Hannah Boleyn climbs 18-17.
• “Daily Duppy” by Nines featurin GRM Daily climbs 30-23.
• “Ecstacy” by Suicidal-Idol climbs 33-26. The Radio 1 chart show is still skipping this track, so it does seem to have been deemed troublesome to a degree that no amount of language editing is going to fix.
• “I Remember Everything” by Zach Bryan featuring Kacey Musgraves climbs 37-29 – a big leap for a track which has spent the last three weeks hovering between 35 and 37.
• “Back on 74” by Jungle climbs 36-30.

The eight tracks leaving the top 40 are:

• “Agora Hils” by Doja Cat, which lasted two weeks and peaked at 29.
• “Hide and Seek” by 163Margs featuring Digga D, after a single week at 38.
• “Fukumean” by Gunna peaked at 7 and lasted 15 weeks.
• “Black Friday” by Tom Odell peaked at 21 and lasted two weeks.
• “Got Me Started” by Troye Sivan got a single week at 34.
• “American Town” by Ed Sheeran got a single week at 27.
• “Dog Days Are Over” by Florence & The Machine hung around the top 40 as a viral archive track for seven weeks on this last run, peaking at 25.
• “Slime You Out” by Drake featuring SZA was at 24 last week, and would presumably still have been on the top 40 if it hadn’t been starred out under the three song rule. It peaked at 10.

On the album chart, number 1 is “For All The Dogs” by Drake, and number 2 is “Crop Circle 3” by Nines, but we’ve covered both of those.

4. Roger Waters – “The Dark Side of the Moon Redux”

Exactly what it sounds like – Roger Waters covering the entire “Dark Side of the Moon” album for its 50th anniversary. His take on “Money” is, um, well, it’s not a slavish copy, to be sure.

7. Sufjan Stevens – “Javelin”

His second top ten album, and his highest position since “Carrie & Lowell” reached number 6 in 2015. His 2020 album “The Ascension” only got to number 35, so commercially speaking, this is a return to form.

22. Slim – “Still Working 2”

Follow up to the 2019 album of the same name (well, without the numeral). That got to 33, so he’s moving up.

31. The Darkness – “Permission to Land”

20th anniversary reissue. On release, it spent 4 weeks at number 1 and 22 weeks in the top 10.